Thriller sparked by a coffee-shop conversation

The Good Son by Jacquelyn Mitchard, HarperCollins, $29.99 .. .. .. .. .. .. ..

Jacqueline Mitchard got her inspiration for this story from a young woman she was waiting beside in a coffee line. She asked the woman if she was at the same convention.

The woman replied that she was not. She came every week to visit her son, who was in prison because he had murdered the only girl he had ever loved in a drug-induced psychosis. She was a lovely lady and Mitchard found it hard to get her out of her mind, wondering if you could still love somebody the same way after they had been guilty of such a crime. The Good Son is the result of that conversation.

Stefan’s mother is a literature professor in a small Midwest university town. His father is a revered football coach in a neighbouring town.

Stefan is an only child who has had what may be called a privileged upbringing. Although an athlete he has no interest in a career in the the sporting field and, disappointing for his mother, no real interest in the academic life.

This changes when his girlfriend Belinda — clever, a champion golfer like her mother and a lead cheerleader — moves to university in another town. Stefan enrols there too. Realising fairly quickly that he lags behind her, Stefan finds drugs gives him the edge he needs to keep up. Belinda’s new friend supplies him and entices Belinda to experiment.

Stefan then wakes up to the fact that he is not Belinda’s only love interest. After a night of altercations and experimenting with a cocktail of drugs, Belinda is discovered, her head bashed in with a golf club and Stefan’s fingerprints are on the club.

Stefan has no recollection of the night but, devastated to find he is the chief suspect, admits it must have been him.

He is sentenced to five years imprisonment. Being in prison is no walk in the park for him, in spite of his father’s support and his mother’s weekly visits, but he uses his head, opting for outside work and taking the opportunity to develop other skills.

He serves half his sentence, is released early for good behaviour and paroled back to his home town.

His parents, though thrilled to have Stefan home, now face all sorts of problems from both former friends and workmates.

There is a general feeling in the town that

Stefan got off very lightly for the murder of one of their star citizens. Belinda’s mother organises an anti-violence against women group, which targets the family.

From then on I felt the story lost its direction. Strange phone calls alert Thea, Stephen’s mother, to the fact there was more to the murder than was initially apparent. She begins to realise that, because Stephen had pleaded guilty and they accepted his plea due to the evidence presented at that time, she should have questioned more. A more sinister note now pervades.

From here the story teeters between just a plain thriller and a psychological thriller.

However I had to read to the end and even though I felt Mitchard missed the opportunity to write a really good novel about rehabilitation, I am sure readers will not be disappointed.

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