The Note by Alafair Burke

 May Hanover, a former district attorney turned law professor, takes a vacation in the Hamptons with two long-time friends Lauren and Kelsey in The Note by Alafair Burke coming out January 14, 2025. A prank by Kelsey involving a note put on the car of the couple who rudely stole the parking place in Sag Harbor that the women were waiting for turns into a police investigation.

Each woman has a complicated past. May recently had an episode of extreme anxiety that a stranger caught on video causing her great embarrassment and a threat to derail her career. Lauren, involved in an lengthy and on-going affair with a wealthy married man who happened to be her boss, finds her job at risk when the wife reveals the affair to Lauren’s current employer.  Kelsey, a suspect in her husband’s murder five years ago, still lives under the shadow of doubt.

When the driver of the pranked car goes missing, the trail eventually leads back to the three friends.  Now they scramble to try to figure out what went so terribly wrong that the police were at their ocean-side rental. Do they confess that Kelsey put the note on the car? She really does not need to be on the wrong side of the law again.

Alafair Burke’s use of unreliable narrators and twisty plots keeps the reader engaged to the very end, with a surprising conclusion. Burke, a Stanford Law School grad and a former deputy district attorney in Portland, Oregon, is a law professor at Hofstra Law School where she teaches criminal law and procedure.