4.5 stars

Great story, really well told - makes me want to read more by this author (who was new to me).
Loved loved loved the shifts in time and in/out of real-time on the narrator's part. That's a device I've never seen handled as well as Cook does, here.

Fascinating, believable characters and if the ending was a little too neatly tied up with a bow, it was still fairly satisfying.

Intriguing book - I read it nearly in one sitting. ( )

More than a mystery, Sandrine’s Case is an incredible journey of self-discovery. The truths Sam uncovers about himself and Sandrine are shocking and incredibly poignant. Thomas H. Cook masterfully builds suspense about Sam’s guilt or innocence and he delivers a highly satisfying and emotional ending to this powerful story about love and redemption. Please click HERE to read my review in its entirety. ( )

This is an excellent courtroom procedural, told via the internal monologue of the defendant. Did he kill his wife or did she commit suicide? Two highly intelligent spouses who don't really fit in a mold, who have drifted as do many spouses in a long marriage. Wait a minute! There is a marvelous twist which turns the story into a poignant tale of deep and desperate love. Really good read! ( )

This is my first Thomas H. Cook novel; it will not be my last since this is among the best mysteries I have ever read.

The narrator is Samuel Madison, an English literature professor, whose wife Sandrine dies from an overdose. Sam is arrested on suspicion of murder and his trial forms the structure of the narrative. As the trial proceeds and witnesses testify, Sam begins a journey of self-discovery as he relives his life, especially relationship with his wife. “I’d come to feel that my thinking was growing deeper and more curiously seeded with poignant memories. One thing was certain, thing that once mattered no longer did and in their vanishing they’d created more space in my mind. It was strange that by radically confining my life, Sandrine’s death, along with its dire consequences, had in some way expanded my consideration of it.”

Sam’s flashbacks reveal the disintegration of his marriage. We learn that “’the core reason [Sandrine’d] loved her husband [was] . . . His kindness. . . . His goodness. His capacity to feel sympathy.’” Lately, however, Sandrine had become increasingly withdrawn and angry and frustrated with Sam: “she moved away from me, moved away from my trumpeted opinions, my sharpened sensibilities, my resentment of all that struck me as puerile.” In fact, the evening of her death, she called him a sociopath.

The book is a psychological character study. Sam emerges as not a particularly likeable character. It is difficult to see the man with whom Sandrine fell in love, the young man who was “without bitterness, harboring no resentments, working on a novel . . . about ‘the tenderness of things’.” When the novel opens, Sam is an arrogant intellectual snob. He shows little emotion except contempt; he makes sarcastic, judgmental comments about the people of the town in which he lives and the students at the college where he teaches. At different points he is described as “aloof” and “soulless” and incapable of sympathy. Sam even admits that he seems to be missing something in his character, and this observation reminds us of a conversation he’d had with Sandrine in which she wondered if an essential element of character “’could be gotten back’” if it went missing.

As a former teacher of English literature, I loved the many literary references in the book. For instance, allusions to Robert Frost’s poetry are made: Sam describes the college president as “young, with miles to go before he slept” and his own life as being numbed because of “the road not taken”. Sam’s thoughts and speech are full of literary references appropriate to a pedantic English professor.

Interest never lags. There is the mystery: Did Sandrine commit suicide or did Sam kill her? There is also the interest in learning how/why Sam changed so much. The reader’s emotions are engaged as his/her feelings for Sam change: just as some sympathy is felt for him, some ugly thought or action of his is revealed.

I highly recommend this book to people who enjoy mysteries but who want more than just suspense. The flyleaf describes the novel as a “literary mystery” and it is indeed that – in every sense of the word.

Please check out my reader's blog (http://schatjesshelves.blogspot.ca/) and follow me on Twitter (@DCYakabuski). ( )

First, forget the descriptions you may have read about "falling in love all over again" (while being on trial for her murder). This isn't a starry eyed romance. It is an excellent story on two other levels - first as a courtroom drama, and second as an examination of two lives that don't work out quite as the couple had dreamed. He and she are professors at a small southern college, an institution they settled for so they could be together. Years later, the wife is dead; was it suicide or murder? The husband is on trial, and the courtroom scenes are interwoven with flashbacks of the police investigation and of the husband's reflections. Neither the attractive Sandrine nor skinny Sam are particularly likeable people - he's cold and she uttered a lot of bookish aphorisms throughout like "disillusionment is a shabby gift". But the story is intriguing and the pace is brisk with a lot of tension. The supporting cast of prosecutor, defense consel, and daughter are very strong and also well written. And there is a large cast of others, many of whom are witnesses, and they add significantly to the enjoyment of "Sandrine's Case". Then there's the last witness, and dialog between defendant and counsel, both part of an ending that just didn't feel right to me. Or more accurately it wasn't one of the half dozen conclusions I had scripted in my own head. Recommended? Yes, but it's a generous 4 stars, not 5 as I expected coming into the concluding pages. Will I read more Thomas H Cook? Perhaps. ( )