The Holdout by Graham Moore

The Holdout by Graham Moore
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Time taken to read - < 1 day

Pages - 325

Publisher - Orion

Source - Netgalley

Blurb from Goodreads

In this twisty tale from Moore (The Sherlockian), the Academy Award-winning screenwriter of The Imitation Game, young juror Maya Seale is convinced that African American high school teacher Bobby Nock is innocent of killing the wealthy white female student with whom he appears to have been involved and persuades her fellow jurors likewise. Ten years later, a true-crime docuseries reassembles the jurors, and Maya, now a defense attorney, must prove her own innocence when one of them is found dead in Maya's room.



My Review

Everyone has moved on from being jurors on one of the most high profile/controversial cases or have they? Maya Seale certainly has or wants to leave it in the past, it has been ten years enough already. However a true crime pod cast type show is coming and Maya is encouraged to take part, from a juror to now a lawyer her bosses heavily encourage it. It doesn't seem so bad, drinks, catch ups and things seemingly going much better than she could have hoped, until someone is murdered - in her hotel room and now Maya is in another role, the accused!

Oooh this is good, split between now and then - mostly present day but we get throw backs to the past and the all important case. Race, pedophilia, murder the case covered everything it should have been a slam dunk but one juror put a spanner in the works. Present day, Maya being accused of murder and having to be represented herself.

It is smart, engaging, pacey and has not one but two mysterious for the readers to guess at and ponder over, can I just say I got neither correct! Legal dramas, a who done it, shady secrets, pasts that would rather be forgotten by many. The case from years ago cannot be put to bed because Maya has to work out who killed the person and even more important how to prove she didn't do it.

A bit of a murder she wrote, some red herrings - I went off on a few chains of thought and was wrong wrong wrong. A book that keeps you on your toes, guessing. A wee spoiler or two dropped in relation to Agatha Christie's books which hopefully by the time I get to them I will have forgotten the references. This is my first time reading this author, I would absolutely read his other stuff, kept me guessing, 4/5 for me.

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