Severn House
Published September 2, 2025
Reviewed by Barbara Fister
Ada Latia, happily divorced after an unhappy marriage, is troubled by a link her ex has sent to her. It’s from a social media site, a story designed to spark outrage, claiming that an autistic child has accidentally killed a classmate at a school for autistics. She stares at the photo of the dead girl, a host of questions forming in her mind. The body seems posed, the room around her has been staged, and someone put makeup on the child’s face so she doesn’t look dead. Looking closer, Ada realizes its the line of makeup she invented for the cosmetics company she founded that now belongs to her ex. This doesn’t look like an accident. It looks to her like murder, by someone who is not autistic but who knows how to lie convincingly and put the blame on someone else.
The comments, typical of the internet, are full of slurs and insults against autistic people, people like Ada – probably the reason her vindictive ex sent it to her. After making a list of the elements in the photo that point to murder, she contacts the county sheriff in the town nearest the school to report it, but gets a brush-off. Wanting to do something, she leaves a voice mail at a public phone number for the FBI. To her surprise, she gets a call back from Agent Henry Bloodstone. He noticed the report, and wants to investigate. He’s willing to take it seriously because he went to school with Ada and knows that she may have been strange and unpopular, but is highly intelligent. If she thinks the photo is evidence of a homicide, he’s willing to travel to her home in Utah to find the truth.
The story is seen primarily through Ada’s eyes, and her interactions with Henry and the school personnel are highly influenced by twinned characteristics: an inability to read people’s nonverbal cues or understand their idiomatic speech patterns and a sharp capacity to see what others don’t see, particularly when interacting with autistic children at the school. When she has a chance to meet with the boy who has been blamed for the accidental death of a girl who had been his friend, she’s able to communicate with him despite his having retreated into nonverbal isolation after the traumatic event. He’s not responsible, she’s convinced, and someone is taking advantage of his vulnerability to cover up their crime.
While there’s a solid mystery plot here, the real focus of the story is seeing the investigation through the eyes of an autistic woman who has plenty of thoughts about the prejudices she faces and the misconceptions those around her have. The conversations between the well-meaning Henry and Ada particularly draw out these themes, as do the interviews she conducts with school personnel who are supposedly experts at educating autists but are frequently clueless or worse. At one point, the stress of being at the school, surrounded by strangers and feeling the pressure of solving the case cause Ada to have a meltdown that is vividly described from Ada’s point of view.
The author, who previously has published young adult series and the Linda Wallheim mystery series about a Mormon woman married to a bishop, was diagnosed with autism as an adult. Like the light she once shed on the patriarchal dynamics of Mormonism, this book takes us inside the world of autism. Though it’s different in style to the Wallheim series, it does a similar job of showing both the high points and the challenges of living outside the mainstream. Ada Latia makes for an intriguing heroine and will likely continue to show readers the world from an autistic angle in this new series.