The Holdout

by Graham Greene

First published 2020

Maya Seale sits in a jury room, staring at eleven other faces. They want to convict Bobby Nock for the disappearance of fifteen-year-old Jessica Silver. The heiress vanished walking home from school. Police found her blood in her teacher's car and discovered inappropriate messages between them. The case seems clear cut. Maya sees something different. She turns the entire jury around, securing Nock's acquittal in a trial that splits America along lines of race, class, and privilege. Ten years pass. Maya works as a defense attorney when a true crime documentary brings the original jurors back together. She wakes up in her hotel room to find one of her fellow jurors dead. The evidence points directly at her. Maya must now defend herself by uncovering what really happened during those jury deliberations. Each juror harbors secrets from that pivotal trial. As Maya digs deeper into the past, she realizes the Jessica Silver case never truly ended.

Genres: mystery, crime, contemporary, thriller

Vibes: intimate, suspenseful, thought-provoking

Tropes: secrets, unreliable-narrator

Period: 10 years

336 pages · Hardcover · Random House

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