Turn of Mind by Alice LaPlante

Imagine a murder mystery narrated by the chief suspect. Imagine the suspect is a Dr. Jennifer White, once an expert hand surgeon in Chicago, now a retired surgeon suffering from Alzheimer's. There lies the basic plot of Alice LaPlante's first novel, Turn of Mind.

White, the main character, has good days and bad ones. She cannot remember from one day to the next, though, that her longtime friend and neighbor Amanda is dead. Nor can she remember if she killed Anna.

The book is appropriately not divided into chapters but into four distinct parts of White's life after the killing in an upscale neighborhood near Lake Michigan. After, all Jennifer White's life is no longer clearly divided. At times, she thinks she is a teenager; at other times, a new mother eager to give up breastfeeding and return to her surgical work.

At one point, she vividly recalls her late husband James' shady financial dealings as a lawyer for the richest white-collar criminals. At other times, she believes her 30ish son Mark to be James. And there are the many times she believes James is once again late, a no-show. She must grieve her husband's death over and over -- each time she is told anew that he has died.

LaPlante takes care not to paint any of the characters -- the key suspect or the victim -- as all good or all bad. The same goes for the supporting cast -- the less-than-successful Mark and his younger sister Fiona (the one who so often covers for others' misdeeds).

Could one of White's adult children have been the killer? Might Fiona have covered for her mother? Might Mark have killed for the money he's always needing? Or did the chief suspect, Dr. Jennifer White, commit the crime but face no fate worse than the one she already faces in the few remaining years of her life?

The book is far more than a murder mystery. It also is a virtual diary of a brilliant surgeon's deteriorating mind as well as the story of a woman who learned early on to adapt, whether to a marriage gone awry, to a lavish lifestyle unjustly earned, to a friend's betrayal and finally to the betrayal of her own mind.