51 pages • 1 hour read
Nina SimonMother Daughter Murder Night
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2022A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Themes
Abuse of Power by Law Enforcement
There are two main police detectives in the novel, Detective Ramirez and Detective Nicoletti, and they both act harshly at times. This demonstrates that police can act inappropriately, and this can affect the victims of their abuse and the outcomes of their cases. This abuse happens between the detectives and the public as well as between the detectives themselves, as Detective Nicoletti does not respect Detective Ramirez to the degree that her position requires. This negatively impacts the case, as it leads to Nicoletti wasting valuable time and resources while chasing the wrong leads.
The first instance in which the police are shown to cross an ethical line is in their interrogation of Jack. Jack is a 15 year old girl, and it is reasonable that she would have been interrogated because Ricardo was supposedly on her tour the night he died. Instead of sticking to these facts, however, Nicoletti insults Jack’s integrity by implying that she may have been flirting with the much older bachelors on the tour. He even goes so far as to talk about girls “like her” as if she belongs to a group of irresponsible and morally corrupt individuals. It remains unclear as to whether he was motivated to speak to her like this because she is a female or because she is part of a racial minority—or both—but his way of speaking to a suspect, particularly one who is a minor, is shown to be disrespectful and unprofessional. Instead of gaining her trust, he puts her, her mother, and her grandmother on the defensive. He continues this unprofessional behavior when he interrogates people at the land trust. At the land trust, Victor explains that Nicoletti accused someone of killing Ricardo. It is at this point that Lana officially calls what Nicoletti is doing an abuse of power.
While the behavior of the police, most notably Detective Nicoletti, is shown to be abusive, it is also self-defeating. This is the case because the detectives, instead of getting the help of the public, actually shun it. While Lana has credible information and theories at multiple points in the novel, she does not share it with the police because she knows that to do so would cause them to humiliate her. Through this, police misbehavior is shown to be not only abusive but also detrimental to solving crimes.
The Struggles of Powerful Women
The difficulties facing powerful women and women pursuing power are illustrated through both Lana and Detective Ramirez. Lana is most stereotyped by her daughter, Beth, who sees her as singularly devoted to power and prestige. She does not understand the difficulties that her mother faced raising her daughter alone, and she rejects her mother’s materialism. Lana is drawn toward power because she at first gave up financial success to raise her daughter. As a result, she was left in a very precarious situation when Ari, her husband, suddenly left her. Because she knows the consequences of relying on somebody else for support, she remains determined not to rely on anybody ever again. Others misinterpret the cause of this determination, however, and consider her selfish and overly consumed by material success. In this way, her determination and success cause her to seem shallow in the eyes of others.
Another woman with ambition is Detective Ramirez. She struggles under the authority of Detective Nicoletti, who demonstrates through his treatment of Jack that he does not respect women. She must follow his orders despite what she knows to be best, particularly when it comes to pursuing Paul as a suspect. This causes her to ignore Lana, who might compromise her opportunity to be a part of an important murder investigation. After all, she is the first Latina woman in the county to be placed on a murder investigation, demonstrating the racism and sexism she is up against.
Ramirez’s main struggle in her professional world is to be noticed, as she is often overlooked. To combat this, she wears tacky and brightly colored outfits. When Lana tries to get her to dress in a classier manner, Detective Ramirez explains to her that classiness will not help her. She has to use her clothing to stand out in a group of people who want her to fade into the background.
Both of these women demonstrate that even though women with strong ambitions may struggle at times, they can succeed. Lana becomes a hugely successful real estate executive, and Ramirez gets promoted at the end of the novel. Both of these women experience struggles while exerting their will, power, and ambition, but in the end, their determination helps them to overcome those who wish to see them fail.
The Limits of Family Bonds
Many of the family relationships in the novel are fraught with turmoil and strife, and the novel explores at what point family bonds break. Beth and Lana’s relationship is an example of one that is strained almost to the breaking point but eventually recovers. The major break in the relationship occurred when Beth became pregnant as a teen out of wedlock. Her mother wanted her to have an abortion, but Beth refused. This shows how important the mother-child bond was to Beth even before Jack was born. Lana’s reaction to the pregnancy caused tension between mother and daughter, which persists almost to the end of the novel.
Despite the tension and the pain both women experience because of their relationship, Lana calls Beth when she has a medical emergency, and Beth cares for her mother in every way that her mother needs. She brings Lana to her home, and she uses her contacts to secure superior medical treatment for her. She allows her mother to stay in Jack’s room even though it means inconveniencing Jack. Lana, despite not wanting to rely on anybody, allows herself to be taken into her daughter’s home because she knows she cannot face her cancer alone. The actions of both women demonstrate that while their bond is strained because of lack of communication and miscommunication in the past, the love remains and allows them both to put their harsh feelings behind them for the good of their family.
Martin’s murder of Hal and Ricardo exemplifies family bonds that are strained beyond their limits. The inciting incident in the Rhoads’s family is that Martin was inadvertently responsible for the fire that killed his mother. His father remains loyal to him to the extent that he helps him cover up the cause of the fire, but he refuses to forgive his son. This causes a permanent wound in Martin and a permanent rift in the family. The two remain distant for years as Hal does not understand or agree with his son’s career ambitions and instead bonds with Ricardo more than he does with Martin. The wound from this betrayal is so great that it ultimately leads Martin to kill both Ricardo and his father because he cannot stand the pain of his jealousy any longer. While any chance at reconciliation or redemption is dead after the murder, the murder itself demonstrates the degree of pain and destruction that betrayal in a familial relationship can cause, thus illustrating just how important communication and forgiveness are in a family.
