Spoilers!
Everyone’s a suspect in Alex Michaelides’ 2021 book, The Maidens, a follow-up to his runaway debut hit, 2019’s The Silent Patient, which I previously reviewed. In fact, Theo Faber and Alicia Berenson, the two characters of that book, feature in this one, albeit briefly. In that way, The Maidens is set prior to the events of The Silent Patient. But yes, back to the point, Michaelides, who takes inspiration from Agatha Christie and other mystery novelists, pays considerable homage to them by making everyone a potential suspect, including the main character herself, Mariana, a group therapist. Obviously, though, given what happens in The Silent Patient, I didn’t figure Michaelides would go that route again, but you never know!
Mariana is still reeling 14 months later from the death of her husband, Sebastian, when she’s summoned to Cambridge University, where her niece, Zoe, is a student, because her friend, Tara, was murdered. On her way there, Mariana meets a rather awkward, mysterious, and instantly slavish young man named Fred. I emphasize young because Mariana is 36, and he’s probably around 20. Once at the campus, she quickly suspects Zoe and Tara’s Greek tragedy professor, Edward Fosca, an American, of the murder. Then another body appears. Still, she suspects him. And another. And still.
While Michaelides presented myriad reasons why Fosca could be the killer — he’s clearly sleeping with his students, a group christened The Maidens, and he’s just creepy and narcissistic; at one point, he even makes a pass at Mariana — that would be too obvious for a whodunit writer like Michaelides! Fosca is the most obvious red herring suspect, but there are others, including Henry, a rather disturbed patient from Mariana’s group therapy back in London, who is stalking her; Morris, the porter at the college, who is also sleeping with one of the girls; Julian, the forensic psychologist working with the police to solve the murders because he seemed so forward with Mariana; Fred, who I definitely started suspecting because of his weird appearance and insertion into the story, and he also keeps telling Mariana he has premonitions, and later, when she finds a love letter to Zoe (unsigned), the word “premonition” is used, so I thought I was on the right track leaning toward Fred; Sebastian because that would be the ultimate twist: he died prior to the events of the book and Mariana even talks about seeing his corpse, but you can’t rule anything out in a whodunit; and then, even though it’s presumed from the start that the killer is a man, and we do get snippets from the killer’s point-of-view throughout the book and it’s clearly a man, I still figured something was … off about Zoe. She was withholding information from Michaelides and she was peripheral enough to arouse my suspicion.
But as I said, I was primarily leaning toward Fred, but Fred ended up saving Mariana in the end … against Zoe. Zoe and Sebastian were lovers — or more accurate to say, given the drastic age difference and that Sebastian was essentially a father figure to Zoe, she was the victim of his sexual abuse and grooming — and Sebastian had plans to kill Mariana for her deceased father’s fortunes (Sebastian killed him) and so he could be with Zoe. But he died mysteriously before the plan could be finished. Even so, Zoe felt such a tether due to her own traumatic abuse to Sebastian, that she continued his work. I believe the killings of the girls in The Maidens was itself a red herring — to make the police think it was some serial killer — to obscure the killing of Mariana and framing Fosca for it.
While Fosca wasn’t the killer, he was still a sleezeball sleeping with his students, so there’s that. Same with Morris. I still think Fred is goofy as hell, too, but he wasn’t a killer.
Like with The Silent Patient, I have to hand it to Michaelides for keeping me guessing. I’m not well-versed, even one iota, in the Greek tragedies, to fully flesh out what he was going for there, but I understood the two themes unfurling throughout the book: grief, and transference of anger, sadness, resentment, loss, etc., at one’s father for not being a loving father, both in the case of Sebastian, and even Mariana herself. Quite well-done indeed. And like with his debut book, I devoured Michaelides’ The Maidens. If he’s going for a page-turner whodunit as homage to Christie, he’s achieved it twice now.
Milam's Musings 