He is investigating the murder of a 14-year-old boy, Ben Rifkin, who was a classmate of his son Jacob and was found stabbed to death in a park near their school.

While Jacob spends the night in jail, Andy reveals to Laurie that his father, Billy Barber, is a convicted murderer and rapist who is serving his life sentence at a Connecticut state prison.

Landay tweeted in 2020 that Thompson does not exist and that the book from which the quote was allegedly obtained, named A General Theory of Human Violence, is fictional.

[4] Defending Jacob received generally positive reviews from critics, who praised the book's subject matter and handling of court scenes.

[5] Hallie Ephron of The Boston Globe also positively reviewed the book's "riveting courtroom procedure" and its parallel narratives that "interlock like the teeth of a zipper, building to a tough and unflinching finale".

[6] Entertainment Weekly's Thom Geier gave it a B+, stating: "[Landay's] prose can be workmanlike and his dialogue pedestrian (Jacob and his peers sound like no teens you've ever met).

[7] Writing for the Chicago Tribune, Julia Keller gave the book a mixed review, panning the "inexplicable bursts of clunky, cliche-ridden prose and huge dumps of exposition" and opined that the ending was "signaled so flamboyantly and built up to at such tedious length that that readers will be well within their rights to skim".

[8] In his piece for Kirkus Reviews, J. Kingston Pierce disagreed, writing: "Many readers, preferring neatly tied-up plots, will be frustrated by the way Landay drops red herrings and possibly significant clues, but then leaves a surfeit of questions outstanding at the end of the book.

[9] The novel has been developed into an eight-episode web television miniseries, produced by Apple TV+, starring Chris Evans, Michelle Dockery and Jaeden Martell as the title character.