The Favor

Debut author Murphy creates a tense thriller about two women who, although strangers, live remarkably similar lives. McKenna Hawkins and Leah Dawson look alike and are both attractive, successful professionals who seem to have married well. Both women are also involved in abusive marriages with partners who control every aspect of their lives, to the point where their husbands have even forced them to leave their jobs. Leah is walking in their shared neighborhood and sees McKenna’s husband physically abusing her through the front window. Struck by the similarity in their situations, Leah continues spying on McKenna until, unable to watch any more, she takes action, with fateful consequences for them both. In alternating chapters, three talented narrators—Dylan Moore, Leon Nixon, and Sarah Mollo-Christensen—portray the two women and Detective Jordan Harrison, who becomes entangled in the unsettling events that follow. Moore and Mollo-Christensen are clearly discernable as the different, but similar women, whose desperation and terror is clearly communicated. Nixon is equally effective as the detective who knows he’s figured out the crimes but cannot prove it. An author’s note gives valuable information about the realities of intimate partner violence.