Confessions of a Murder Suspect: Part 1

by James Patterson, Maxine Paetro
Tandy Angel was the last person to see her parents before they were murdered. Now she and her three siblings are the prime suspects. As she works to clear their names, Tandy discovers her family's dark secrets.

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Full list of words from this list:

words only definitions & notes
  1. fracas
    a noisy, angry argument or fight between people
    So I never heard a thing—no frantic thumping, no terrified shouting, no fracas at all.
  2. bereaved
    sorrowful through loss or deprivation
    Of course, Sergeant Caputo didn’t see us as bereaved children going through the worst day of our tender young lives.
  3. suspect
    someone who is believed to be guilty of a crime
    He saw us as suspects, every one of us a “person of interest” in a locked-door double homicide.
  4. forensic
    used in the investigation of facts or evidence in court
    The unsolved Ramsey case had inspired me to read up on the famous forensic pathologists Michael Baden and Henry Lee.
  5. gawk
    look with amazement
    I’m sorry we had to take your folks out the back way. You wouldn’t have wanted them carried around the front so the rubberneckers could gawk and take pictures, would you?
  6. alibi
    proof that someone accused of a crime could not have done it
    “We’ll check out your alibi soon enough,” Caputo snapped.
  7. unorthodox
    breaking with tradition or typical norms
    “I can’t imagine someone could want them dead. They may have had some... unorthodox quirks, but they were good people.”
  8. succinctly
    with concise and precise brevity; to the point
    He asked about her relationships with all of us, to which she responded succinctly that while Maud was her employer, each of us kids was like family to her.
  9. dumbfounded
    as if rendered speechless with astonishment and surprise
    Caputo looked dumbfounded, like he’d never seen a teenager cry before.
  10. impeccable
    without error or flaw
    He looked handsome and impeccable, even at three in the morning.
  11. gargoyle
    an ornament consisting of a grotesquely carved figure
    I could tell he was wondering what would happen to us, the super-freak Angel kids, without the protection of our gargoyle parents.
  12. repatriate
    send someone back to his homeland against his will
    The ambassador refused to answer my questions about the lack of progress to repatriate the refugees; he just said, with a cheeky smile, “And when did you get your degree in the foreign service, Miss Angel?”
  13. synthesize
    combine and form a complex whole
    My father’s uber computer had one enormous screen. It operated at warp speed and had massive storage capacity so that he could mine the scientific world on every front, synthesize the data, and adapt it to his needs.
  14. disgruntled
    in a state of sulky dissatisfaction
    Let’s say she had a particularly disgruntled client who happened to be a homicidal maniac as well.
  15. autopsy
    an examination and dissection of a dead body
    When will we get the autopsy report?
  16. commiserate
    feel or express sympathy or compassion
    If only I had someone I could commiserate with about this invasion of privacy, about the way everyone was treating us like murderers instead of grieving children.
  17. gargantuan
    of great mass; huge and bulky
    I went across the hall to our home theater, with its plush velvet seats lined up in front of a gargantuan screen that doubled as a television when we weren’t watching movies (strictly educational films, of course).
  18. notarize
    authenticate by someone empowered to witness signatures
    After the reading of her will, the letter was opened. It was in my grandmother’s handwriting, and it was signed and notarized.
  19. aspiration
    a will to succeed
    Rather than feeling insulted, my parents had used Hilda’s disapproval to fuel their financial aspirations.
  20. disinherit
    prevent deliberately (as by making a will) from receiving
    They had made millions and millions since Gram Hilda had disinherited them.
  21. prodigy
    an unusually gifted or intelligent person
    Only moments later, I was wearing a black dress and heels, and Harry had been transformed from a waif in baggy clothes to the smartly dressed boy prodigy that we knew him to be.
  22. bombastic
    ostentatiously lofty in style
    ‘That’s why you’d like Bach, Tandy,” he’d said. “He’s not bombastic like Brahms, or romantic like Chopin.”
  23. rendition
    a performance of a musical composition or a dramatic role
    I was brought back to the moment by the man sitting to my left, who seemed overcome by Harry’s rendition of the piece.
  24. inkling
    a slight suggestion or vague understanding
    Based on my conversations with your uncle, I think your parents might have had an inkling about which of you was out to get them,” said Caputo.
  25. narcissist
    someone who is excessively self-centered
    Sampson looked good for a man of forty, and I would have expected nothing less than an impeccable presentation from a twenty-four-karat-gold narcissist who got paid sums of money for telling lies in the most pedestrian prose imaginable.
  26. unethical
    not conforming to approved standards of social behavior
    The villain in his book was a character called Maeve Engle, and, like my mother, she was a hedge-fund manager. The “fictitious” Maeve Engle was arrogant, cruel, greedy, and unethical, and she was murdered for it.
  27. motive
    the reason that arouses action toward a desired goal
    Listening to Nate Crosby’s drivel was almost as bad as enduring potshots from Morris Sampson. And frankly, both of them had a motive for killing my parents.
  28. dissolve
    cause to fade away
    Dr. Keyes said, “Matthew, I understand. You have every right to be angry. But let’s remember the exercises we did together years ago, dear, to dissolve the anger, rid yourself of this poison.
  29. unconscionable
    lacking a sense of right conduct
    Murdering two people in their bed is unconscionable.
  30. precise
    sharply exact or accurate or delimited
    A sizable chunk of money—$1.7 million, to be exact—somehow slipped off the table, and your father covered it up. However, there’s a copy of a statement from a bank in the Channel Islands, where there is an account containing that precise amount— and your name is on it.
  31. larceny
    the act of taking something from someone unlawfully
    And that little bit of grand larceny is why your father’s bookkeeping is your business.
  32. obstruction
    something immaterial that stands in the way
    “Obstruction is when a person intentionally obstructs, impairs, or perverts the administration of law, or prevents or attempts to prevent a public servant from performing an official function by means of intimidation, physical force, or interference.”
  33. arraignment
    the act of calling someone before a court to be formally charged and to enter a plea
    “You can be held for up to three days until your arraignment.”
  34. matricide
    the murder of one's own mother
    And then there was me—a sixteen-year-old under suspicion of matricide, patricide, and obstruction of governmental administration.
  35. claustrophobic
    abnormally afraid of closed-in places
    It’s not the claustrophobia. My whole world is claustrophobic. Always has been. That’s the life of an Angel.
  36. olfactory
    of or relating to the sense of smell
    I can almost feel the olfactory receptors in my nose sending chemical signals to my brain, where the components are being lab-tested.
  37. sieve
    separate by passing through a straining device
    He was about thirty-five feet long, with leopard spots and three hundred rows of tiny teeth, perfect for sieving plankton out of the sea.
  38. behemoth
    someone or something that is abnormally large and powerful
    I was a tiny speck in scuba gear, and Oliphant was a rare and wonderful behemoth, like a living flying carpet beneath me.
  39. alluvial
    relating to deposits carried by rushing streams
    After she turned sixteen she flew to South Africa, and within days she’d panned a large diamond from an alluvial mine.
  40. bravado
    a swaggering show of courage
    As smart as they were, they should have known her better, should have seen through her bravado and been less dazzled by her success.
Created on Wed Jul 13 19:50:59 EDT 2016 (updated Mon Sep 24 13:47:59 EDT 2018)

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