Review for "The Body in Question" by Jill Ciment (2019) Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
“The Body in Question” is a short novel that centers on a sensational murder trial in Central Florida. The defendant is a wealthy teen girl accused of murdering her brother. Six jurors and an alternate are chosen from the public and later sequestered, one of them being the narrator, C-2. C-2 is a 52-year-old photographer who is married to an older man. Another juror, F-17, is a non married, 40-ish anatomy teacher. Throughout the novel, we only know these characters only as C-2 and F-17 as they begin a torrid, but passionless affair during the murder trial.
Although the focus of this book is the trial, this comes to a shocking conclusion around the middle of the novel. The rest of the book deals with grief and other plot twists, as well as difficult choices that C-2 makes.
I gave this book four stars because it is very well written and readable. I didn’t care for the characters though. Everybody in this book is to some degree obnoxious, selfish, and completely self indulgent. Normally how I feel about the characters isn’t part of my reviews, but in this case there is a detached, sterile quality in this novel that I couldn’t penetrate. Being that the subject matter deals with a murder case, I figured that it carries over into the overall tone of this book.
I definitely recommend this.
29chapters.com 