The Maidens – Alex Michaelides

Having read Alex Michaelides’ other two novels – The Silent Patient and The Fury – I thought it was high time I picked up his dark-academia-meets-psychological-thriller novel, The Maidens.

The story starts with Mariana in “a small dark room in Cambridge”, determined to find a way to prove that Edward Fosca murdered “at least two people”. It’s an intriguing opener, and Michaelides knows how to pull the reader in. In short order, you learn that Mariana is a group therapy facilitator who is struggling to let go of her grief for her late husband. She receives a call from her niece, Zoe, begging her to come to Cambridge. Zoe’s university roommate is missing, and a girl’s body has just been found stabbed to death in a field.

Mariana rushes to her side, and tragically, it turns out that the murdered girl is in fact Zoe’s roommate. As Mariana and Zoe turn their eyes to the enigmatic Greek studies professor they believe to be responsible, another girl turns up dead. And then another. All of the girls received postcards before their deaths, all with lines from Greek plays about sacrifice inscribed on the back. The police don’t believe Mariana and Zoe’s theory about the professor, as he has alibis for all of the murders – in the form of the select group of students he tutors, whom he has dubbed The Maidens.

Michaelides once again writes what he knows. He studied English literature at Trinity College in Cambridge himself, and he does an amazing job of evoking its history and atmosphere, the small-town-old-money vibe of the British institution. Also, the recurring motif of Greek classics is presumably a nod to his own heritage (his father was a Greek Cypriot).

Even though the story is compelling enough to keep your interest, the mystery of The Maidens takes a long time to unravel. You’ll be more than halfway through the book before you learn anything not already revealed in the blurb. Michaelides disguises this slow-moving plot in short, sharp chapters, and by introducing a plethora of red herrings. In addition to the professor Edward Fosca, there’s the other members of the Maidens, the unhinged therapy client who follows Mariana to Cambridge, the young romantic interest who Mariana met by chance on the train, the former colleague (now forensic psychologist) who’s always hanging around, and a few more besides.

There’s even a cross-over with the characters and plot of The Silent Patient (Mariana being the one who suggests that Theo, the protagonist of that novel, apply for a job at the Grove psychiatric facility) – a fun Easter egg for fans of Michaelides’ other novels.

Unfortunately for readers who like everything tied up in a neat bow, there are several threads left dangling at the end of The Maidens. Why is Julian, the forensic psychologist, so creepy? Why was Fred so in love with Mariana? What happened when Mariana walked through the door on the final page of the Epilogue? What was written on the pages of the diary that disappeared? That’s the thing about weaving in so many red herrings and possibilities – you’ll tangle yourself in knots trying to straighten them all out, and Michaelides clearly wasn’t inclined to try all that hard.

I must, of course, offer a content warning – not only for murder and sexual abuse, but also for a horrible, awful, terrible dog death at the start of Part 4. The Maidens is a fine read (as long as you don’t like your psychological thrillers straightforward and neat), but sensitive readers should proceed with caution.

Read The Maidens on audiobook via Libro.fm here.

My favourite Amazon reviews of The Maidens:

• “It was awful: badly written, full of cliches, silly coincidences, and awkward dialogue. None of the characters was deeper than a puddle.” – Anne W.
• “Atmosphere without danger, murder without mystery, characters devoid of any personality. The leaves were dappled and the wind howling. Archetypes tortured by the cruel hand of Michalides who’ve ripped them straight out of the latest teenage drama series to break their backs carrying a plot painstakingly, chapter by lukewarm chapter. By the end of it I didn’t care if the whole damn college was murdered so long as I never had to see the cover again . By page 50 I thought, to hell with it, and switched to the audiobook. It kept me only slightly more entertained than the traffic.” – Arthur Stanley Ellington
• “The Maidens is utter nonsense, and I’m now just annoyed that my time would have been better spent cleaning the tile grout in my bathroom.” – Matt