Fifty Fifty

The novel opens with a flash-forward. Eddie Flynn, a New York defense attorney and former con artist, waits for a jury verdict in the most complex murder trial in the city's history. The jury has deliberated for only 48 minutes, and for the first time in his career, Eddie cannot predict the outcome.

The narrative jumps back three months. On October 5, 2018, two 911 calls come from 152 Franklin Street, the home of Frank Avellino, the former mayor of New York City. In the first, his daughter Alexandra says she is hiding in the bathroom while her sister, Sofia, roams the house with a knife after stabbing their father. A minute later, Sofia calls to say Alexandra attacked Frank. When police arrive, Frank is dead, and both sisters are arrested.

Eddie arrives at the NYPD First Precinct after a tip from his police contact. The precinct swarms with defense attorneys competing to represent one of the sisters. Eddie is steered toward Sofia, while Theodore Levy, a prominent defense attorney, pursues Alexandra. Levy's junior associate, Kate Brooks, accompanies him; she is routinely humiliated and sexually harassed by Levy at the firm.

Eddie interviews Sofia, who says she arrived at the house, found her father dying in the dark bedroom, and fled in terror. Eddie, who only defends clients he believes innocent, takes her case. Before the interview ends, Sofia bites through her own wrist in an act of self-harm, and Eddie carries her to a waiting ambulance.

Interspersed throughout the narrative are chapters narrated by "She," the unnamed killer. These reveal a woman who has killed before. The killer reflects on an abusive childhood: Her mother, Jane, forced both daughters into grueling chess practice from age four, biting their fingers as punishment. Being arrested at the crime scene is by design. Under New York's Son of Sam laws, a convicted murderer cannot inherit from their victim; if her sister is convicted, the killer alone inherits Frank's 49-million-dollar estate.

Both sisters post bail. Eddie enlists Harper, his investigator and the woman he quietly loves, to watch over Sofia and gather background. Harper learns the sisters' mother died in a fall at the Franklin Street house years earlier, and that Frank sent both daughters to separate boarding schools afterward. Sofia's life has been marked by substance addiction, rehab, and chronic self-harm, while Alexandra built a successful career in real estate.

The "She" chapters also reveal the killer's expanding body count. She lures Frank's attorney to her apartment, tortures and kills him for information, then fakes his disappearance. She murders a pharmacist and cashier in Queens to eliminate the trail connecting her to Haloperidol, an antipsychotic drug she has been secretly adding to Frank's food for months. The drug made Frank confused and compliant, mimicking early dementia.

Kate's story develops in parallel. After another associate steals her trial strategy and presents it to Levy as his own, Kate quits the firm. She convinces Alexandra that Levy intends to negotiate a guilty plea rather than fight for acquittal, and Alexandra signs with Kate as her sole attorney. Kate recruits Bloch, her childhood best friend and a former police officer, as her investigator. Her strategy is bold: She pursues a joint trial, betting that a jury comparing the polished Alexandra against Sofia, who has a documented history of mental health conditions, will acquit her client.

Working with retired Judge Harry Ford, his legal consultant, Eddie notices that Frank's autopsy shows a completely normal brain despite months of dementia-like symptoms. They deduce Frank was being drugged by someone with regular access. The killer accelerated the timeline with a knife when Frank discovered the poisoning and moved to change his will.

Both defense teams inspect the crime scene. In a "She" chapter, the killer reviews footage of the inspections and spots something one team photographed that could expose her. She resolves to steal the photos and kill the photographer. The night Eddie goes to Harper's house to confess his feelings, he finds police cars outside. Harper has been stabbed to death at her front door. Eddie recovers her gold crucifix necklace from the blood on the hallway floor and wears it around his neck from that night forward.

Three months later, the trial begins. Kate's opening argument highlights Sofia's documented history of mental health conditions and violence. Eddie argues that if the prosecution cannot prove which sister committed the murder, both must be acquitted. Eddie discredits the prosecution's hair-fiber expert by revealing the analyst matched Eddie's own hair to a sample from Harry's dog, Clarence Darrow, destroying the expert's credibility. Kate undermines the bite-mark evidence against Alexandra.

Outside the courthouse, Hal Cohen, Frank's political strategist, is murdered in a drive-by stabbing by a motorcycle rider in black leathers. The prosecution then introduces a bombshell: a journal Frank kept before his death, delivered by the now-dead Cohen. Its final entry reads: "I know what's been going on. She's been poisoning my food . . . It was Sofia" (296). Sofia screams her innocence, and the jury stares at her with hatred.

Kate recognizes the journal as planted evidence she and Eddie predicted in a secret meeting. They had agreed that whoever benefited from such a revelation was the killer. Believing she now represents the murderer, Kate resolves to stop actively helping Alexandra. Eddie cross-examines the journal's authenticator and exposes three factual errors proving it is a forgery: a doctor appointment on the wrong date, breakfast at a restaurant closed that day, and a news broadcast referenced days before it aired. He also reveals that Alexandra paid one million dollars to Cohen, making it appear she bribed him to plant the forged journal.

In closing arguments, Eddie asks the jury to "do the right thing" (314). Kate asks for "the verdict which my client deserves" (315), without specifying acquittal. After 48 minutes, the verdicts come: Sofia, not guilty; Alexandra, guilty.

After the verdict, Bloch articulates the doubt gnawing at both her and Eddie. If the killer was careful enough to poison Frank for months without leaving a trace, she would not make three obvious errors in a forged journal unless they were planted on purpose. The killer wanted the journal exposed as a forgery so Alexandra would appear to be the forger and Sofia the innocent victim. Sofia, not Alexandra, is the true killer.

Eddie confirms this by visiting Little Tony P, a hospitalized short-order cook at a restaurant owned by Jimmy "the Hat" Fellini, Eddie's childhood friend and head of a New York crime family. Tony admits a woman paid him to put liquid Haloperidol in Frank's breakfast every morning and identifies Sofia.

Eddie confronts Sofia at the Franklin Street house, where she has begun moving in. Bloch and Harry are already hidden inside, having broken in earlier to investigate. Eddie reveals that her 911 call claimed she could see her sister's shadow under the bathroom door, but Bloch confirmed no shadow is visible there. When Detectives Tyler and Soames arrive to arrest her, Sofia attacks: She smashes a coffee pot into Tyler's face, takes his gun, shoots Soames, and turns the weapon on Eddie. Eddie tells her he will not kill her: "She is" (342). Bloch fires from concealment, hitting Sofia in the shoulder.

Both detectives survive. Sofia survives but loses her arm. Alexandra's conviction is overturned before sentencing. Sofia cannot be retried for Frank's murder due to double jeopardy, the constitutional protection against being tried twice for the same crime, but she faces charges for the murders of the pharmacist, the cashier, Cohen, and Harper. Kate uses a mysterious card Eddie took from Levy's wallet to expose a dark-web site where Levy uploaded covert photographs of female employees, forcing his resignation and securing damages for 14 women he victimized. Eddie and Kate form a new firm, Flynn and Brooks, with Harry as consultant, Bloch as investigator, and Clarence as the office dog. Eddie visits Harper's grave one final time and falls asleep against her headstone.