Iphigenia in Forest Hills: Anatomy of a Murder Trial by Janet Malcolm

A review by Michael Washburn

Janet Malcolm's Iphigenia in Forest Hills: Anatomy of a Murder Trial, an expansion of a 2010 New Yorker essay, explores Mazoltuv Borukhova's trial for the murder of her husband, Daniel Malatov. Malatov was brazenly assassinated in a Queens playground in 2007. The prosecution, which ultimately won the day, sending Borukhova to jail for life, argues that after losing a custody battle for her four-year-old daughter, Michele, Borukhova arranged to have her estranged husband killed. Malatov arrived at the playground to retrieve his daughter from her mother, and as Malatov and Borukhova swung their daughter playfully back and forth -- Michele's arms in her mother's hands, her father supporting her lower body -- a gunman approached the father and riddled him with bullets. The gunman then turned and walked calmly out of the park. The prosecution linked the triggerman, a family acquaintance named Mikhail Mallayav, to Borukhova through circumstantial evidence, most potently 90 phone calls...

• Read the entire review
• More reviews from Los Angeles Review of Books

More Than Three Decades of Quality Writing and Criticism

The National Book Critics Circle, founded in 1974, honors outstanding writing and fosters a national conversation about reading, criticism, and literature. To learn about how to join, click here.