The Holdout

This novel by Academy Award-winning screenwriter Graham Moore deals with a highly sensational murder trial that takes in Los Angeles in the spring and summer of 2009. A part-time English teacher is accused of killing a 15 year old female student because they had been socializing outside of school and somewhat incriminating texts were found. There was also some of her blood in the front seat of his car. The teacher, Bobby Nock, is black and the missing girl (for no body has ever been found), Jessica Silver, was white and the daughter of a very wealthy real estate developer.  One member of the jury, Maya Seale, is not convinced he is guilty and thinks race is playing a significant role in both the trial and the jury's deliberations. She holds out and eventually convinces or badgers the other 11 jury members into returning a verdict of not guilty. Although the jurors were sequestered, their names were leaked and, after the trial, the public vitriol against them damaged their lives.
What Maya took from this experience was a desire to better understand the justice system and so she went to law school and is now, 10 years later, a practicing attorney. Another member of the jury, Rick Leonard, with whom Maya had an affair while they were sequestered for the trial, and who is black, takes it upon himself to solve the mystery of Jessica's murder. In a book he writes, he pillories Maya as the driver behind the jury's verdict. When a true-crime TV series decides to do a special on the 10th anniversary of the trial, Maya is initially adamantly opposed to participating. But her law partners think it will add cachet to her reputation and convince her to attend. Rick Leonard is promising to reveal information he has turned up in his investigation that will settle the question of Bobby Nock's guilt. But, on the first night the former jurors are reunited at the original hotel of sequester,  Rick and Maya get into a heated argument over a drink in her hotel room and she leaves to cool off. When she returns, it is to find Rick dead in her room and herself accused of killing him. Maya, thanks to her partners and her reputation, is let out on bail and decides she must figure out what information Rick had that probably got him killed. And the person who would know that is Bobby Nock, if only she can find him.
Moving back and forward in time, various chapters reveal  each individual juror's thinking during the time of the trial. This is a very twisty plot that raises the important question of whether or not justice is always served by the legal system.
Reviews from Publishers Weekly, Kirkus, and The Guardian.