Four stars because I really hated it! The story made me very uncomfortable, not because my son has been accused of murder, like Jacob, but just because the tension that builds here is among a parent's worst nightmares, very possibly the worst. For the most part, the story is a legal thriller, but that tension about sons and fathers and families and husbands and wives and generic inheritance made me jittery and anxious, as if I was reading horror. 
 Jacob's father, Andy Barber, narrates. He is a respected district attorney in Massachusetts until his fourteen year old son's arrest. Then he's put on paid leave for the duration of the trial and who knows what. 
 Andy is complicated. The layers of his personality are not necessarily deep, but they fit together in complicated, overlapping ways, like tectonic plates. I liked him a lot, despite a certain aloofness, but I understand completely if you find him hard to warm up to. 
 At times, the stilted conversation and haemorrhaging trust between Andy and his wife Laurie was painful to read, not because I recognised its details or exact nature, but because I recognised something about it, about how having children somehow sometimes affects my relationship with my wife in ways I mourn. So again, four stars because I really hated the two or three times I winced. And ouch! 
 So William Landay "succeeds" if you like uncomfortable tension. A few writer's crafts things about the execution of the story did not thrill me, such as the long conversations without a lot of details or description, but that was minor. I'm not an aficionado of legal thrillers, but the court room scenes usually held my attention. At times, a lawyerly twist actually opened the door, showing me the appeal of the genre and perhaps the profession. The ending has its detractors and its stalwarts. Perhaps this reveals I'm green, but I have to admit I went into the ending leaning toward rounding down to three stars. However, is there a wrestler's move for this? The ending lifted me up, spun me around, and slammed me to the mat, even though I guessed a few minor things. So, overall, good show, Mr. William &*%# Landay.