Released: March 2024 (Current Version)
Genre: Thriller, Fiction, Drama
Number of Pages: 323
Frieda McFadden is a well known writer with a set of standalone thrillers that take place in unforgiving settings. As the title implies, The Inmate chooses a prison as its starting location.
In a modern American setting, Brooke Sullivan starts working at the Raker High Security Penitentiary as a nurse, but there’s one inmate with sinister connections to her past. Shane Nelson, Brooke’s former lover, committed a series or murders with our protagonist barely escaping with her life ten years earlier. Caught between providing for her son Josh and reliving awful events, the reader is taken through a gradual reveal of the finer details.
With larger text and relatively straightforward language, The Inmate is very accessible to a wide range of readers. As a result, we quickly latch onto Brooke and her situation. The trauma from the stormy night lingers and we always stay in her perspective. It’s a good direction to take, but the twists and turns feel very predictable on the way through. The hazy point of view, emotional manipulation and the possibility of someone else being the killer are all common threads in the genre.
The Inmate uses many familiar elements that don’t really stand apart from other contemporaries; the tagline “the guiltiest people aren’t always the ones behind bars” is also a bit of a giveaway. On top of this, the final act features a number of sudden turns that don’t really give us enough time to know the other characters in Brooke’s life. We do get some heartfelt moments of connection, but the book needed more depth in other areas.
Recommended?
MAYBE: The Inmate features a reasonable amount of character development for Brooke and does get you invested in her story, a single mum looking after her son after a traumatic event. But the narrative feels quite predictable as a thriller and swerves wildly in the final act with multiple reversals that are very rushed. It’s an easy read, but it falls short when compared to others.
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