The Dorchester Five

From Booklist
*Starred Review* A woman witnesses an apparent suicide as a man falls in front of a train. Soon she is a "person of interest" to the police, and to prove her innocence, she tries to find out what really happened. Sound kind of humdrum? Consider this: the novel is formatted entirely as a blog, written by the narrator, whom we know only by her online moniker, "l.g. fickel." The other characters in the story--the group of friends who help her try to solve the case--are visitors to her blog; we know them only by their screen names and by their unique ways of expressing themselves. Everything we know about the mystery, we know because fickel has told us, and soon, we (just like her online friends) begin to suspect that fickel may not be being completely up front with us. Manus, a Boston law professor, has crafted a riveting mystery that may (or may not) exist entirely in the mind of the narrator; he has created characters who may be real (or may not); he has brilliantly pulled his readers into the story, turning them into voyeurs; and he has created a protagonist so complex that, even after we've finished the novel, we don't know whether she is victim or killer, male or female, crazy or just deeply troubled. An incredibly daring novel and a complete success. --David Pitt [This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.]