I tore through this novel over the weekend. It’s a psychological thriller and murder mystery set at Cambridge University. “The Maidens” are an informal sorority of students whose leader/father figure is an American professor of classics named Edward Fosca. When a beautiful “maiden” named Tara is found brutally murdered just off campus, psychotherapist Mariana Andros rushes to the university to comfort her niece Zoe, Tara’s best friend. Mariana is convinced that despite his alibi, Fosca is behind the murder, especially when the body of another maiden is discovered mutilated in a field. Mariana is racing against time in order to save her niece and other young women from hideous death, but of course, she is placing herself in grave danger as well.
Mariana is in her late 30s, a group therapist, and in deep grief. Her beloved husband Sebastian died tragically a year previously and Mariana still struggles with it. Zoe, her sister’s child, is her only family, and Zoe was herself orphaned at a young age. When the murder hits the news, Zoe asks Mariana to help her in her grief, and so Mariana leaves her practice to travel to Cambridge, but Mariana has an unsettled feeling, as if she is being watched. She is concerned about her patient Henry, a very unstable man who seems obsessed with her. On the train to Cambridge she meets a graduate student named Fred who is besotted with her and feels certain she will marry him one day. And then there is Edward Fosca, a charismatic lecturer with a rock star status at the university. His lecture on Persephone, Demeter and the life/death cult surrounding Eulusis sets off alarm bells for Mariana and seems to confirm that he and his “maidens” are involved in bizarre cult-like behavior. The local police arrest a variety of men, convinced they have solved the crime, but Mariana knows that they haven’t and continues investigating on her own, drawing the attention and exasperation of the local police, Fosca and his disciples. Interspersed with Mariana’s investigation, author Michaelides adds diary entries from the murderer, which provide the reader with vital information that Mariana lacks. I was on the edge of my seat for almost the entirety of the novel.
This book contains themes related to grief and to abusive parent/child or adult/child relationships. I don’t know much about psychotherapy but it seemed to me that Michaelides did some work in making sure that Mariana’s interpretation of events and people’s behaviors were consistent with professional psychiatric practices. I was really drawn to Mariana and her personal journey through grief and the resolution of the murders.
