This book is a very, very thorough play-by-play of Lizzie Borden’s trial. I was committed to reading the whole thing, but I got mired down around the 40% mark. I watched the 2008 movie Lizzie to see if I wanted to keep reading the book, then I skimmed the rest of part 2 and read all of part 3. Part 3 is the most interesting because it reviews different camps of theories about who killed the Bordens. The author does not explicitly take sides, but it is clear that she really likes the theory set forth in the film Lizzie.

Personally, I’m a fan of a combo of theories: Lizzie was sexually abused by her father, the maid knew about it and was sympathetic, plus she was staring in the face of being cut out of her inheritance and impoverished. She saw a possibility of escape, and she took it. But there is no way to prove any of this... except for a tantalizing detail at the very end of the book—there is a document still protected under client-council privilege that has never been revealed to the public. Might it contain Lizzie’s true account of what happened?