The Inmate

I’ll admit, I went into *The Inmate* expecting a by-the-numbers prison thriller—maybe a few twists, a predictable villain, the usual moralizing about the justice system. Instead, McFadden delivered something far more insidious: a character study disguised as a suspense novel. Brooke Sullivan isn’t just a nurse practitioner; she’s a woman whose past is a landmine, and the prison becomes the detonator. The way McFadden weaves Brooke’s backstory into the present-day tension is *chefs-kiss*—no info-dumps, just breadcrumbs that make you lean in closer. And when the reveals hit? They don’t just surprise; they *rewrite* everything you thought you knew. Leslie Howard’s performance is *so* good it’s almost unfair. She nails Brooke’s early composure, but the real magic is in how she lets the cracks show—not through dramatic sobs, but in the way her voice thins when Brooke’s lying to herself, or how her cadence speeds up when panic sets in. The only critique? The pacing in the middle act drags *just* slightly during the medical procedural bits (I get it, prison healthcare is grim, but I don’t need a play-by-play of every inmate’s chart). And while the ending lands with a punch, I wished for one more scene to let the emotional fallout breathe. Still, this is a thriller that lingers—not for its shocks, but for how eerily it mirrors the ways we rationalize our own bad decisions. If you’ve ever wondered how far you’d go to protect a secret, this’ll haunt you in the best way.