I've always had a weakness for these mystery/crime thrillers--you know, the dragon tattoos and angels & demons of the world? I suppose I should be a little embarrassed by this but I'm not. They are my peanut butter and fluff. 
 Defending Jacob is some of the best fluff I've ever tasted. It is written by a former assistant district attorney from Massachusetts with a real knack for this type of storytelling--Jacob is perfectly paced with a tugging suspense that doesn't abate until the final sentence. And it's rife with all this legal mumbo jumbo so sometimes you forget it's just fluff (don't worry, though, it will remind you). By the end, my adrenaline levels were so high I needed to borrow my Mom's blood pressure pills. 
 If you don't want spoilers, you should probably stop reading now because I can only avoid them for so long. The thing I love about this book is its delve into the personal. The assistant DA's teenage son is implicated in the murder of his classmate and so even though this is at some level a legal drama, it is also a family drama. To switch roles from lead prosecutor to paternal protectorate is obviously necessary for the ADA, but it does nothing to curb the tide of repercussions for him, his family, and the case. I was also riveted by my own fluctuation between empathy for a boy unjustly dealing with a murder rap and revulsion for him as doubts of his innocence grew. 
 Also, this book has wicked cool courtroom scenes. 
 Although the novel's "present" occurs mostly during the aftermath of the murder and the murder trial itself, the story is interwoven with witness testimony from a grand jury trial that occurs six months later...which must clearly be unrelated to the events of the current murder trial, right? This seemingly unrelated testimony adds to the suspense of the book and its relevance is not revealed until the final chapter. And if you want to know what that relevance is, it turns out to be this: (view spoiler)[ 
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