Lydia Cooper: My Second Death

In Lydia Cooper’s wry and absorbing debut novel, we are introduced to Mickey Brandis, a brilliant twenty-eight-year-old doctoral candidate in medieval literature who is part Lisbeth Salander and part Dexter. She lives in her parents’ garage and swears too often, but she never complains about the rain or cold, she rarely eats dead animals, and she hasn’t killed a man since she was ten. Her life is dull and predictable but legal, and she intends to keep it that way.

But the careful existence Mickey has created in adulthood is upended when she is mysteriously led to a condemned house where she discovers an exquisitely mutilated corpse. The same surreal afternoon, she is asked by a timid, wall-eyed art student to solve a murder that occurred twenty years earlier. While she gets deeper and deeper into the investigation, she begins to lose hold on her tenuous connection to reality—to her maddening students and graduate thesis advisor, to her stoic parents, who are no longer speaking, to her confused, chameleon-like adolescent brother, and to her older brother, Dave, a zany poet who is growing increasingly erratic and keenly interested in Mickey’s investigation.

Driven by an unforgettable voice, and filled with razor-sharp wit and vivid characters, My Second Death is a smart, suspenseful novel and a provocative examination of family, loyalty, the human psyche, and the secrets we keep to save ourselves.

From Booklist

“I rarely eat dead animals, and I haven’t killed a man since I was ten,” confesses University of Akron doctoral candidate Michaela “Mickey” Brandis. She’s not supernatural, she’s just antisocial. Really, really antisocial. Knowing she doesn’t have the capacity to feel or respond like other people, Mickey lives in a self-imposed exile, leaving her parents’ garage apartment only to teach and work on her thesis. Then a cryptic message in her campus mailbox directs her to an abandoned building where she finds a mutilated corpse. Later, she’s asked by one of her brother’s artist friends to solve his mother’s 20-year-old murder. Is Mickey looking for one killer or two? For a person who vomits after physical contact with others, Mickey is severely stressed by the interactions required in investigative work. Literature professor Cooper’s debut novel is a fast-paced psychological thriller with an unforgettable heroine. This damaged yet fiercely independent protagonist will appeal to fans of Stieg Larsson and Gillian Flynn.

—Karen Keefe