The Inmate

I read this in two sittings because McFadden writes chapters that end with a small hook and I kept saying one more. The Inmate was published June 13, 2022 by Poisoned Pen Press in the edition cited here, 336 pages, ISBN 9781728296173, author Freida McFadden. The original self published edition came the same month in 2022 with 388 pages. I am keeping the facts to the Poisoned Pen paperback because that is the ISBN on the cover file. The story follows Brooke Sullivan, a nurse practitioner who takes a job at a men's maximum security prison and finds her high school boyfriend inside.

Brooke is a single mother to a small boy named Josh. She lives with her parents, works hard, tries to keep her past shut. In high school she dated Shane Nelson, the star quarterback. One night, her best friend Tim and his girlfriend were murdered. Brooke survived. Her testimony helped put Shane away for life. At least that is what she told the police and what she tells herself. She has not seen Shane in more than a decade. She tells her son his father died. She tells coworkers nothing.

The prison job pays better and has day shifts that fit school pickup, so Brooke takes it even though her friend warns her. The rules on day one are clear. Treat prisoners with respect. Do not share personal details. Do not get friendly. Brooke breaks all three almost at once because on her first round she sees Shane. He is older, tattooed, calm, and he knows her. He calls her by name. He says he is innocent. He says he thinks about her.

McFadden splits the book between now chapters at the prison and then chapters from high school. The then chapters show Brooke as a teenager, bright, a little lonely, dazzled by Shane, annoyed by Tim's drinking, close to her parents in a normal way. The murders happen at a party house. Details come slowly. Who was where. Who left with whom. What Brooke saw through a window and what she heard. I liked this structure more than I expected. The past does more than explain the present. It changes meaning as Brooke remembers more.

In the present, Brooke tries to act normal while her nerves fray. An older nurse named Carol shows her the ropes and tells stories about inmates who manipulate staff. A guard named Tim, no relation to the dead friend, same first name which rattled me for a chapter, flirts and watches. Another inmate, Danny, seems kind and artistic and asks for medical help that may be real or may be a setup. Shane requests Brooke for appointments. He tells her Tim was the killer, not him. He says Brooke helped convict an innocent boy because she was scared and young.

At home, things get strange. Brooke's son Josh starts acting out at school. Her parents argue about money and safety. Someone leaves a note. Someone follows her car. She gets calls with no voice. She wonders if Shane has allies outside. She wonders if Danny is watching her. She wonders if she is making it up from guilt. McFadden is good at this middle paranoia. Every kindness looks like a threat and every threat could be a misunderstanding. I kept flipping between suspecting Shane, suspecting Danny, and suspecting Brooke herself is misreading.

How the prison works in the story

I am not an expert on prisons and the book does not pretend to be a manual, but the daily details felt concrete enough to hold the plot. Med passes. Count. Lockdowns. The clinic with its locked cabinets and panic button. Nurses charting while guards stand in doors. Inmates testing boundaries with small requests before big ones. Brooke is new, female, young, and connected to a famous case, even if no one knows the connection at first. That makes her a target for testing.

Carol warns Brooke that inmates will ask about her life to find a hold over her. Do not mention your kid. Do not mention where you live. Do not bring photos. Brooke does all the things she should not, not because she is stupid, but because she is tired and wants to be liked and because Shane already knows everything. That last point matters. Normal rules assume a clean start. Brooke starts dirty. Shane knew her parents, her house, her habits. He can talk to her in a code no one else hears. Every shift becomes a reunion she cannot admit.

Shane's version of the past is simple. Tim killed the couple in a jealous rage. Shane found the bodies. Brooke, half asleep and traumatized, pointed at the wrong boy. The police, eager to close a brutal double murder, built around her. Once Shane is inside, no one listens. He shows Brooke letters he wrote that were returned. He names details about that night that were never in papers. Brooke wants to dismiss it as charm. She cannot fully.

Danny's thread adds pressure. He is in for something less violent, draws, asks Brooke for extra bandages, tells her Shane is dangerous and to stay away. Is Danny protecting her or isolating her. I went back and forth. McFadden gives Danny a sister outside who may be helping or hurting. There is a scene in the clinic where Danny grabs Brooke's wrist and the guard is slow to respond. My heart beat faster. Later Danny apologizes in a way that could be sincere or practiced. The book never lets you settle until it wants you to.

Then and now

The high school chapters deserve attention because they carry the emotional weight. Young Brooke loves Shane but feels second to football. Shane is sweet in public and a little controlling in private, or is that memory colored by later fear. Tim is the rich friend with a temper. His girlfriend is sharp and tired of him. The night of the murders is a party with drinking, a fight about keys, a girl going to lie down, a boy going to smoke. Brooke falls asleep in a car. She wakes to screams.

McFadden writes trauma memory well here. Brooke remembers sounds before images. A door. A name called. Blood that looks black in porch light. Police lights. Questions asked too fast. Her parents arriving. She picks Shane in a lineup or in a photo array, I will not give the exact procedure to avoid spoiling the clue chain, but the identification feels rushed in retrospect. As an adult nurse, Brooke knows how stress ruins perception. She starts to doubt her teenage certainty. That doubt is the engine of the second half.

At home in the present, Josh is the soft center. He is little, loves dinosaurs or trucks depending on the chapter, misses his grandparents when they fight, asks about his father. Brooke lies to protect him and hates lying. There is a scene where Josh draws the family and leaves a blank space. I felt that. There is another where Brooke is late for pickup because of a lockdown and imagines the worst the whole drive. Parent readers will find these parts harder than the prison scenes.

The romance, if you can call it that, is uncomfortable on purpose. Shane was her first love. He remembers songs and jokes. He looks at her like no time passed. Brooke feels a pull she is ashamed of. The book does not excuse it. It shows how first love plus guilt plus fear can mimic trust. I appreciated that McFadden lets Brooke be attracted and repulsed at once without making her a fool. She sets boundaries, then Shane finds the crack in each one because he helped build her.

The turn and the aftermath

I will avoid naming the killer outright because the book depends on that reveal, but I can say how the reveal works. McFadden plants three possible solutions and lets each grow. One is that Shane is innocent and Tim did it. One is that Shane is guilty and playing a long game to get Brooke alone. One is that someone else entirely used that night for their own ends and has been managing both Brooke and Shane since. The final chapters pick one and reframe small details from earlier, a bandage count, a phone call, a drawing, a story about a sister, into new shapes. I guessed the broad shape two chapters before the reveal and missed the specific hand that moved. That is about right for McFadden. Fair, fast, a little ruthless.

The last fifty pages move quickly. There is a confrontation in a house, not in the prison, which surprised me and raised the stakes because Josh is near. There are choices about who to call and what to admit. Brooke has to use her nursing skills in a way that is not glamorous, just practical under panic. Blood, breathing, keeping a child calm. I liked that competence mattered more than a speech.

After, the book does not pretend everything heals. Brooke's parents learn things. Work learns things. Josh asks questions that cannot be answered with a story. The final image is not happy so much as clear. Brooke sees her past without the filter she used for years. Whether she can live with what she sees is left open enough to feel honest.

What I liked and what bothered me

The pace is the main pleasure. Short chapters, plain sentences, cliffhangers that are not cheap because they come from real dilemmas. Should Brooke tell her boss who she is. Should she answer Shane's note. Should she search Danny's cell details in the chart. Each choice has a cost. I finished fast and immediately wanted to talk about it, which for a thriller is the point.

Brooke as a narrator is flawed in useful ways. She withholds from the reader at first, not by lying outright but by skipping. She says she testified, not what she saw exactly. She says Shane was her boyfriend, not how scared she was of him by the end of high school. As the book goes, the gaps fill. Some readers will feel tricked. I felt the withholding matched how people tell hard stories. You give the headline, then the detail when trust builds.

The prison setting is vivid but thin in places. Guards blur. Procedures bend to serve twists. A real nurse might scoff at how often Brooke is alone with high risk inmates. I am not a nurse, so I went with it, but I noticed times when a panic button should have been pressed sooner. If you need strict realism, this will nag. If you accept thriller logic, the tension covers it.

The handling of guilt and memory is better than average for this shelf. The book asks how a scared teenager could be sure and what that certainty costs over eleven years. It asks whether loving someone once obligates you to believe them now. It does not excuse false testimony, but it shows how it happens: shock, suggestion, desire to help, fear of the real killer still out there. I thought about that after closing.

A smaller complaint is that some side characters exist only to suspect. Carol is wise, Tim the guard is watchful, Danny is kind, the warden is stern. They get just enough past to seem possible and not enough to feel whole. That is common in plot driven thrillers, and McFadden does it smoothly, but on reflection I could not tell you much about Carol beyond her warnings.

Still, I recommend this to anyone who likes locked room pressure in an open place. A prison is full of people and rules, yet Brooke is lonelier each shift. A small town past follows her into a concrete building. A son waits at home while his mother decides what truth she can afford. The final twist reframes the whole friendship group, and the last line about family made me sit quiet. For a book I expected to be simple, it left a complicated aftertaste, in a good way.

Facts kept for this entry: first published June 13, 2022, author Freida McFadden, Poisoned Pen Press edition cited with 336 pages and ISBN 9781728296173, original 2022 Hollywood Upstairs Press paperback with 388 pages noted. Year field uses original 2022. Summary follows that text.