The Perfect Daughter

A tenacious, loving mother fights to prove her daughter is innocent of murder in this well-crafted psychological thriller from Palmer (The New Husband). Grace Francone knows that her 16-year-old daughter, Penny, has dissociative identity disorder, but Penny’s multiple personalities have never been violent. Adopted by the Francones after she was found alone at age four in a deserted park near their Swampscott, Mass., home, Penny is accused of murdering her biological mother, with whom she recently reconnected. The evidence against her is overwhelming—she was covered in the victim’s blood, and her fingerprints are on the murder weapon. While Penny awaits trial in a decaying state hospital, she’s treated by a compassionate psychiatrist, who struggles with his own mental problems. Palmer digs into the fraught family dynamics of the Francone household, where Penny was embraced by one brother, Jack, and resented by the other brother, Ryan. Alternating points of view between Grace and Jack, a college filmmaker, ratchet up the suspense. Palmer’s take on a complex psychological disorder will keep readers in its grip. [em]Agents: Meg Ruley and Rebecca Scherer, Jane Rotrosen Agency. (Apr.) [/em]