The Great Believers remains one of the best books I’ve ever read, so I got really excited when I heard Rebecca Makkai was coming out with another book!
If you’re not already familiar with this book, it’s about the murder of a young girl at a boarding school in 1995. The main character/narrator of the book (Bodie Kane) was a student at the school at the time. She wasn’t exactly friends with the girl who died (Thalia Keith), but it’s a small enough school that they all knew each other. The two were roommates for a year and friendly with each other, but not exactly friends.
A man named Omar Evans was arrested and convicted of Thalia’s murder. He’s a black man who was working as the school’s athletic trainer. Apparently his DNA was found on the swimsuit Thalia was wearing when her body was found in the swimming pool, some of his hair was found in her mouth, and he was in his office near the swimming pool around the time of her death. The prosecution made a big deal about how no one else had access to the swimming pool at that time, except all the students knew there were keys all over the place and no one ever had a hard time getting in if they knew the right person.
But (we later learn) the local police department was encouraged to look at suspects who were neither staff nor students. Although Omar was on the school’s payroll, he wasn’t a teacher, and the narrative of a black man killing a white girl feel much more comfortable to WASPs than considering the possibility that one of their own could be capable of such a crime.
As an adult, Bodie has become the cohost of a popular podcast that covers unsolved cold cases of women who were murdered.
The book starts in 2018 when Bodie is turning 40, separated from her husband, and heading back to the boarding school (Granby) to teach a 2-week class about podcasting. In her first email to her students she lists some possible topics for them to cover, and includes Thalia’s murder on the list, almost as an afterthought.
Bodie is not consciously aware of questioning Omar’s conviction, but she’s self aware enough to know that she wouldn’t have mentioned it if there wasn’t something about the case that bothered her.
Sure enough, Britt, one of her students is eager to pick apart the case. It’s one of those cases that already has a cult following and a whole community of people questioning the evidence against Omar and pointing fingers at other people — namely Thalia’s boyfriend, Robbie Serenho. Except his alibi is pretty rock solid.
Instead, Bodie starts thinking about her favorite teacher, Dennis Bloch. As she thinks back on her high school days she starts remembering the times she was scheduled to meet with Mr. Bloch 1:1 and had to wait for him to finish his 1:1 time with Thalia. On a school trip she stumbled upon them with their ankles entwined, leaning towards each other until they see Bodie and jump apart.
Bodie becomes convinced Mr. Bloch is the one who killed Thalia, but she knows she doesn’t have any evidence to back up that theory, so she doesn’t come out and say it, but she does encourage her students to dig into the case.
Turns out DNA evidence was new enough in 1995 that, although juries found it convincing, it was far from the rock-hard evidence everyone assumes it to be.
Combine that with the fact that the crime scene wasn’t even treated like a crime scene until a week after her body was found. At first, it was assumed it was an accident or even a suicide, so the pool was drained and students and staff were allowed in and around the building for days before it was finally roped off.
The police didn’t even find any blood in Omar’s office, but he was such a convenient scapegoat that they came up with a story about him beating her head against a poster in his office (a poster no one remembers seeing) and throwing it away after dumping her body in the pool.
Omar made the mistake of not lawyering up when he was being questioned by the police because he didn’t realize he was a suspect. By the time he did realize what was going on, it was too late. The police held him for hours without any food or water until he was willing to agree to anything they said for the chance to go home. He rescinded his confession less than 24 hours later, but it was too late. People were too willing to believe the story of the black guy killing the white girl.
The end of the book takes place in 2022 when Bodie, Britt, and another of Bodie’s former students are all testifying in a hearing to try to get Omar’s conviction overturned. They know it’s a long shot, but they have to try.
I won’t give away the ending because there’s a big twist I did not see coming. I will say that, while this book is a murder mystery, it’s about so much more than that. It’s about the trauma we all endure in high school and how that shapes the adults we become. It’s about race and class, but more than anything, it’s about the overwhelming number of cases (solved and unsolved) of women and girls killed by men. It’s so depressing, but Makkai writes about it so beautifully I can’t get enough of it and I can’t wait until her next book comes out.