REVIEW: The Maidens by Alex Michaelides

As a newbie crime fiction reader, I couldn’t have chosen a better book to welcome me into the genre! The Maidens isn’t usually a book I would pick up — I well and truly stay in my YA and sad memoirs lane — but when it appeared on my desk with a mysteriously cool cover and the promise of a twisty Greek mythology-style psychological thriller, I was sold. While it was the content and the promise of some serious dark academia vibes that drew me in, this definitely won’t be the last crime fiction novel to land on my TBR pile this year.

Alex Michaelides

Protagonist Mariana Andros is a brilliant but troubled group therapist and recent widower, her husband having drowned on a holiday that was supposed to have reset their marriage. Dealing with her own grief and counselling her patients through theirs gives the story an interesting window to explore Mariana’s backstory. Settling into her new life, Mariana is suddenly pulled back into the world of her alma mater, St Christopher’s College, when her niece Zoe’s best friend is brutally murdered on campus.

What presents as a small town tragedy quickly turns to something more sinister when more bodies start to turn up. Mariana discovers a thread between the victims: each was a member of The Maidens, a mysterious secret society of female students under the thumb of the university’s most charismatic professor, Edward Fosca. Not only is Fosca the obvious villain, but Mariana has proof. In the possession of each of the deceased she finds a postcard with concerning quotes from Greek Mythology — the very subject Fosca has devoted his career to.

As the reader, you’re inclined to agree with Mariana that Fosca is the perfect suspect. He’s mysterious and confident, the kind of powerful figure that could commit this type of crime and get away with it with ease. He has a level of control over his group of Maidens that is concerning in its own right and cements him as The Bad Guy straight away. However, while Michaelides tries to convince you you’ve pinned it on the right guy, he also introduces an incredible number of red herrings to constantly have you doubting yourself.

Could it be the strange man Mariana met on the train, or the former patient she discovers stalking her? Could it be someone as innocent as the College’s Dorm Mother, or as close as one of the jealous Maidens? In this book, absolutely everyone is a suspect. No character is introduced without a smartly-placed red thread that makes you question their motives and leaves a pinboard of overwhelmingly convincing evidence.

All the while, Michaelides shines a light on each character in turn, with the story jumping between Mariana and an anonymous narrator. These chapters are seemingly unrelated to our main storyline, detailing the traumatic childhood of an unnamed and deeply troubled individual. In a book where you think you know everything and have the murderer picked out, this had me questioning everything! But fear not, it all comes together in a twisty, clever and shocking ending that had me ordering Michaelides first novel, The Silent Patient, the second I finished so that I could jump straight back into his atmospheric and complex world!

—The Maidens by Alex Michaelides (Hachette Australia) is out now.

The Maidens

by Alex Michalides

St Christopher's College, Cambridge, is a closed world to most.

For Mariana Andros - a group therapist struggling through her private grief - it's where she met her late husband. For her niece, Zoe, it's the tragic scene of her best friend's murder. As memory and mystery entangle Mariana, she finds a society full of secrets, which has been shocked to its core by the murder of one of its own. Because behind its idyllic beauty is a web of jealousy and rage which emanates from an exclusive set of students known only as The Maidens...

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Amy Evans