Finished Th 9/4/14
A terrific stand-alone, and I loved every page!
Two eleven year old girls take a baby and kill it. This is covered in the opening chapter, but you don't know what 'really happened' until the last chapter.
Alice Manning- 'the good girl'. Her mother is kind of a hippie-type, and wanted Alice to NOT follow the crowd, but Alice wants to just get along to get along. Their relationship is the trigger for all of the action, but that's not revealed until the end.
Ronnie Fuller- the girl from the wrong side of the tracks. And, she is instantly tagged as the mastermind behind the abduction and killing.
Alice's mother, Helen Manny, encourages the relationship between Ronnie and Alice because she sees and identifies with Ronnie's independent spirit. She thinks that this is lacking in her daugher.
Book opens with a birthday party for Maddy in which Ronnie brings a black Barbie. This is obviously an inappropriate gift for an eleven year old girl. Ronnie accidently hits Maddy's mother and both Alice and Ronnie are asked to leave the party. This is where they see the baby, Olivia.
This baby is the granddaughter of a prominent black judge and his daughter is very well connected to the local political structure.
Kevin Infante and Nancy Porter are the detectives on the case. Detective Sergeant Lenhardt is the wise old mentor to both Kevin and Infante. This character is in the 'Tess' series of novels by Lippman.
Sharon Keppelman is Nancy's lawyer. She feels guilt about the outcome, but has only been manipulated by Alice.
The girls get seven years, and the story skips to when they are 18 and have been released. Alice is fifty pounds heavier. Ronnie managed to get into a mental ward by gaming the system. She's obviously troubled, but Alice is much, much worse, but this is carefully concealed until the end of the novel.
A series of 'false' kidnappings of toddlers has been occurring just as the girls are released. Finally, one girl is actually abducted.
Mira Jennings is a reporter for the 'Beacon-Light' who is trying to advance her journalistic career through the current kidnapping case. She is fed a lead (by the mother of Olivia) that the two girls had taken the girl because there was a strong resemblance to her daugher that they killed.
Because Alice and Ronnie were juveniles they couldn't be charged very severely, so the charges were split into three different issues. That way they could at least serve until they turned 18. A sub-plot ( I wish this was more developed) was that children really do kill, and what is odd is that they don't do it more often.
Alice had a child when in prison by a guard. This child was taken from her and she is falsely convinced that the child she took was this child.
Although Ronnie actually strangled the first child, it was Alice convinced her that it was in the best interest of the child. She was deranged and said that the kid wasn't wanted, and they would be doing the kid a favor.
Helen knew that Alice was the real 'evil doer' and convinces Ronnie that Alices' jack'n the box which she planted at the crime scene would make sure that they would both be treated fairly. Alice would get some of the blame.
Ronnie slits her wrists in the tub. Alice's boyfriend flees the country.
Amazon link-
http://www.amazon.com/Every-Secret-Thing-A-Novel/dp/006207489X
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