Buy this book
Books N Bytes participates in affiliate programs including Amazon Associates and Bookshop.org. We may earn a commission when you purchase through our links at no extra cost to you.
Quaker Witness is Irene Allen's second Elizabeth Elliot novel, and the book where the series gains its full shape. A Harvard graduate student in biology, a member of the Cambridge Friends Meeting, is accused of murdering her thesis adviser. Elizabeth, the clerk of the Meeting, is asked to be the student's legal witness in the local Quaker sense (a sustained ethical accompaniment, not a courtroom witness), and the role pulls her into the actual investigation.
Allen handles the academic biology world with the kind of insider precision she brought to the Meeting itself in the first book (she has a doctorate in geological sciences). The Quaker structural ethics (the Meeting's clearness committee, the visiting Friends, the silent worship as a deliberative space) are rendered with care.
Four stars. A genuinely thoughtful cozy. Recommended to readers who like religious-community mysteries handled with respect. Read in order after Quaker Silence.
Related reads
If you liked Quaker Witness
Quaker Silence
by Irene Allen
The first Elizabeth Elliot mystery. Quaker clerk as accidental detective in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Unusually thoughtful cozy.
The Lincoln Lawyer
by Michael Connelly
The Lincoln Lawyer by Michael Connelly 2005 review. Mickey Haller, a Los Angeles defense attorney who works out of the back of a Lincoln Town Car, takes a case that pulls him into something larger. The novel that launched a series and a film franchise.
Big Little Lies
by Liane Moriarty
Big Little Lies by Liane Moriarty 2014 review. Three mothers at an Australian elementary school converge on a kindergarten Trivia Night where someone will die. The contemporary domestic-suspense novel that defined the late-2010s book-club shelf.
In the Woods
by Tana French
In the Woods by Tana French 2007 review. Dublin Murder Squad detective Rob Ryan is assigned to a child murder in the same woods where his two best friends disappeared twenty years earlier. The Edgar winner that launched the strongest contemporary literary-crime series.
Tell No One
by Harlan Coben
Tell No One by Harlan Coben 2001 review. A pediatrician receives an email containing a video clip of his murdered wife, eight years after her death. The single best Coben standalone and the one that defined the contemporary domestic-thriller register.
Down in the Flood
by Kenneth Abel
The third Danny Chaisson novel. Kenneth Abel writing Hurricane Katrina before Katrina happened.
More by this author