BY THE TIME YOU READ THIS

FBI forensic linguist Raisa Susanto greets the news that her sister, Isabel Parker, has died in prison with a combination of relief and skepticism. Could the nightmare that began when 15-year-old Isabel killed her parents and brother—in The Lies You Wrote (2024)—and then embarked on a quarter-century career of murder finally have come to an end? Though all the evidence indicates that Isabel is indeed dead, she’s left behind a legacy that feels just as menacing. The #FreeBell movement founded by college student Gabriela Cruz, recasting Isabel as a righteous vigilante whose victims deserved their violent ends, has in turn spawned the anti-FreeBells under the leadership of attorney Essi Halla, whose full-throated insistence that Isabel murdered her father seems calculated specifically to keep Essi herself in the spotlight. Even more upsetting, Gabriela has assembled a list of very recent victims whose murders sure look like the work of Isabel. As Raisa and her not-quite-partner, forensic psychologist Callum Kilkenny, investigate, the toxic possibilities multiply almost as fast as the author’s thoroughly disorienting shifts in time from chapter to chapter. Is the new series of killings the work of a copycat? Has Isabel’s homicidal mania infected Raisa’s younger sister, social media moderator Delaney Moore? Or is it possible that Isabel is really alive and still thirsting for blood after all? As police detective Maeve St. Ivany tells Raisa: “I never wondered what it would be like to have a psychopathic serial killer as a sibling, but it sounds exhausting.”

May 27, 2025 - 05:36

FBI forensic linguist Raisa Susanto greets the news that her sister, Isabel Parker, has died in prison with a combination of relief and skepticism. Could the nightmare that began when 15-year-old Isabel killed her parents and brother—in The Lies You Wrote (2024)—and then embarked on a quarter-century career of murder finally have come to an end? Though all the evidence indicates that Isabel is indeed dead, she’s left behind a legacy that feels just as menacing. The #FreeBell movement founded by college student Gabriela Cruz, recasting Isabel as a righteous vigilante whose victims deserved their violent ends, has in turn spawned the anti-FreeBells under the leadership of attorney Essi Halla, whose full-throated insistence that Isabel murdered her father seems calculated specifically to keep Essi herself in the spotlight. Even more upsetting, Gabriela has assembled a list of very recent victims whose murders sure look like the work of Isabel. As Raisa and her not-quite-partner, forensic psychologist Callum Kilkenny, investigate, the toxic possibilities multiply almost as fast as the author’s thoroughly disorienting shifts in time from chapter to chapter. Is the new series of killings the work of a copycat? Has Isabel’s homicidal mania infected Raisa’s younger sister, social media moderator Delaney Moore? Or is it possible that Isabel is really alive and still thirsting for blood after all? As police detective Maeve St. Ivany tells Raisa: “I never wondered what it would be like to have a psychopathic serial killer as a sibling, but it sounds exhausting.”