Perfect Match
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4.5 • 34 Ratings
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- $12.99
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- $12.99
Publisher Description
'... so taut you may need to remind yourself to breathe.' - Sun-Herald
'... packed with suspense and insight. If you enjoy reading Patricia Cornwell and Kathy Reichs, this is a novel which will absorb you.' - Highlife
What would push you to commit a crime? Assistant District Attorney Nina Frost prosecutes child molesters, and in the course of her everyday work she endures the frustration of seeing too many criminals slip through the system and walk free. So when she receives the awful news that her son Nathaniel has been sexually abused and is so traumatised that he is now mute she takes justice into her own hands as she enters the courtroom with a gun. She may have killed the man who hurt her son, but has she destroyed her family in the process? And whatever happened to innocent until proven guilty?
In Perfect Match, Jodi Picoult again weaves a heart-wrenching story which explores the lengths to which a mother will go to protect her child. Part thriller, part courtroom drama and part family portrait, this disturbing novel paints an indelible portrait of a family torn apart, and the drama of its riveting courtroom conclusion maintains the suspense until the final verdict is handed down.
Jodi Picoult's bestselling and widely acclaimed novels include Nineteen Minutes, My sister's Keeper, Plain Truth, Keeping Faith and The Pact. She lives in New Hampshire with her husband and three children. Read more about Jodi Picoult and her new novel Handle with Care on her website at www.jodipicoult.com.au
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
One plot element a case of child molestation involving a Catholic priest in Picoult's latest novel (after Salem Falls) now seems eerily prescient, but that's only part of the saga she weaves, which is primarily an indictment of the current criminal justice system. Nina Frost, an assistant district attorney in Maine, knows how hard it is to obtain a conviction for a sex crime when the victim is a juvenile, so when her five-year-old son, Nathaniel, identifies their priest as being the man who raped him, Nina's grievances with the system become personal. Frustrated by the threat of an unsatisfactory legal outcome, she takes the law into her own hands, killing the priest in open court. Awaiting her own trial, a startling fact emerges from the DNA: the priest was innocent. Will Nina be able to prove to a jury that her actions were justified, particularly since she killed the wrong man? Picoult adeptly renders Nina's feelings impotence, guilt, the drive for retribution but Nina is herself an unsympathetic heroine, from her initial accusation of her husband to her arrogant vigilante stance, which does little to persuade the reader that an act of premeditation should be recast as maternal instinct. While the argument that the current system is flawed is solid, the only alternative offered is an iffy form of frontier justice that many readers may find unpalatable.
