Prizewinning journalist Janet Malcolm discovers the elements of
Greek tragedy in a sensational New York City murder trial
"Astringent and absorbing. . . . Iphigenia in Forest Hills casts,
from its first pages, a genuine spell - the kind of spell to which
Ms. Malcolm's admirers (and I am one) have become addicted."-Dwight
Garner, New York Times "This is shrewd and quirky crime reporting
at its irresistible and disabused best."-Louis Begley, Wall Street
Journal "She couldn't have done it and she must have done it." This
is the enigma at the heart of Janet Malcolm's riveting book about a
murder trial in the insular Bukharan-Jewish community of Forest
Hills, Queens, that captured national attention. The defendant,
Mazoltuv Borukhova, a beautiful young physician, is accused of
hiring an assassin to kill her estranged husband, Daniel Malakov, a
respected orthodontist, in the presence of their four-year old
child. The prosecutor calls it an act of vengeance: just weeks
before Malakov was killed in cold blood, he was given custody of
Michelle for inexplicable reasons. It is the "Dickensian ordeal" of
Borukhova's innocent child that drives Malcolm's inquiry. With the
intellectual and emotional precision for which she is known,
Malcolm looks at the trial-"a contest between competing
narratives"-from every conceivable angle. It is the chasm between
our ideals of justice and the human factors that influence every
trial-from divergent lawyering abilities to the nature of jury
selection, the malleability of evidence, and the disposition of the
judge-that is perhaps most striking. Surely one of the most keenly
observed trial books ever written, Iphigenia in Forest Hills is
ultimately about character and "reasonable doubt." As Jeffrey Rosen
writes, it is "as suspenseful and exciting as a detective story,
with all the moral and intellectual interest of a great novel."
"Iphigenia in Forest Hills is another dazzling triumph from Janet
Malcolm. Here, as always, Malcolm's work inspires the best kind of
disquiet in a reader-the obligation to think." -Jeffrey Toobin,
author of The Nine: Inside the Secret World of the Supreme Court "A
remarkable achievement that ranks with Malcolm's greatest books.
Her scrupulous reporting and interviews with protagonists on both
sides of the trial make her own narrative as suspenseful and
exciting as a detective story, with all the moral and intellectual
interest of a great novel." -Jeffrey Rosen, author of The Supreme
Court: The Personalities and Rivalries that Defined America
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