The Silence of Murder

The Silence of Murder (2011), a crime fiction for young adults by Dandi Daley Mackall, is centered on the killing of John Johnson, a locally renowned high school teacher who serves as the coach of its basketball team. When the murder is investigated, Jeremy Long, a student who has been mute since early childhood, becomes the main suspect. Long’s little sister, Hope, who suspects Jeremy is being used as a scapegoat to obfuscate who is actually culpable, resolves to find the murderer to prove her brother’s innocence. The story examines disability in youth, especially the vulnerability of disabled subjects in the assignation of blame for social ills.

The novel begins by characterizing the Long siblings. Hope Long, sixteen, is her brother Jeremy’s biggest fan. Indeed, the story is punctuated with anecdotes about Jeremy’s great attitude and moral compass, showing how he has demonstrated his near-infallibility over time. This all changes when Jeremy is brought up as a suspect for the murder of Coach Johnson. Unable to defend himself due to his muteness, an effect of living on the autism spectrum, Jeremy has little recourse to traditional justice. The community has placed Jeremy on the margins for the past ten years since he became mute in the middle of adolescence. The lawyer, empathizing somewhat, but too jaded to seek total vindication for Jeremy, tells Hope to tell the jury that Jeremy is insane. Hope rejects this idea, knowing that Jeremy is simply different and that the community declines to see that he is intrinsically good. During multiple preliminary hearings in the courtroom, Hope comes to her brother’s defense to no avail, as the adults categorically reject her youth and personal interest in the outcome. Moreover, the lawyers on the other side introduce what seems to be incontrovertible evidence that Jeremy killed the coach with his baseball bat in his barn after school on the day he was discovered dead.

Despite great odds, Hope joins with her best friend, TJ, as well as Chase, the sheriff’s son who doubles as her romantic interest, to undermine what she believes is a short-sighted investigation that cares mainly about expediency. Along the way, their attempts to gather evidence are complicated by mysterious events that seem designed to threaten them: on one occasion, a white truck stalks them through the town; in others, false evidence appears to throw them off their trail. At first, Hope settles on Mrs. Johnson as the murderer, hypothesizing that she killed him because of a bad marriage, greed, or an affair. They fail to find any evidence, so Hope goes with TJ to the Johnsons’ barn, the site of the murder. There, Hope discovers a checklist indicating that Mr. Johnson paid a large sum of money to her own mother, Rita Long, each month. Shocked, having thought that Mr. Johnson barely knew who her mother was, Hope hopes that she is not the murderer.



As the case begins to seem totally hopeless, Hope makes a final effort to gain evidence of Jeremy’s innocence. She digs through his room and accidentally breaks a jar, finding a piece of paper that reads the date of the murder and where Jeremy was located. Jeremy had not been at Coach Johnson’s barn, but rather, had gone off to collect air to memorialize the date of his father’s death.

The court learns that Coach Johnson was Jeremy’s real father, which explains the large child support payments made to Rita. On the day of his death, he had been fighting with Rita in the barn about his fatherhood. As the court realizes Jeremy is innocent, it struggles to pinpoint who actually killed Coach Johnson. Suddenly, Chase comes forward, admitting that he accidentally killed his coach with the bat. As Chase is charged, Jeremy is released to go home with his mother and sister. Chase’s future, beyond a charge of accidental manslaughter, remains ambiguous, though the conclusion suggests that the Long family lives a happy life.

Essentially a story about the need to give extra care and attention to the marginalized voices of the disabled, The Silence of Murder explains how the justice system often reneges on its duty to protect all people equally. In a classic murder mystery structure, the scapegoat’s sister emerges as the protagonist who strives to redeem him in the eyes of their community. Mackall’s novel sends a positive message about the ability of love and family to step in where formal systems fail.