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Iphigenia in Forest Hills: Anatomy of a Murder Trial
"Astringent and absorbing. . . . Iphigenia in Forest Hills casts, from its first pages, a genuine spell — the kind of spell to which Ms. Malcolm’s admirers (and I am one) have become addicted." —Dwight Garner, New York Times "She couldn't have done it and she must have done it." This is the enigma at the heart of Janet Malcolm's riveting new book about a murder trial in the insular Bukharan-Jewish community of Forest Hills, Queens, that captured national attention. The defendant, Mazoltuv Borukhova, a beautiful young physician, is accused of hiring an assassin to kill her estranged husband, Daniel Malakov, a respected orthodontist, in the presence of their four-year old child. The prosecutor calls it an act of just weeks before Malakov was killed in cold blood, he was given custody of Michelle for inexplicable reasons. It is the "Dickensian ordeal" of Borukhova's innocent child that drives Malcolm's inquiry. With the intellectual and emotional precision for which she is known, Malcolm looks at the trial—"a contest between competing narratives"—from every conceivable angle. It is the chasm between our ideals of justice and the human factors that influence every trial—from divergent lawyering abilities to the nature of jury selection, the malleability of evidence, and the disposition of the judge—that is perhaps most striking. Surely one of the most keenly observed trial books ever written, Iphigenia in Forest Hills is ultimately about character and "reasonable doubt." As Jeffrey Rosen writes, it is "as suspenseful and exciting as a detective story, with all the moral and intellectual interest of a great novel." " Iphigenia in Forest Hills is another dazzling triumph from Janet Malcolm. Here, as always, Malcolm’s work inspires the best kind of disquiet in a reader—the obligation to think." —Jeffrey Toobin, author of The Inside the Secret World of the Supreme Court "A remarkable achievement that ranks with Malcolm's greatest books. Her scrupulous reporting and interviews with protagonists on both sides of the trial make her own narrative as suspenseful and exciting as a detective story, with all the moral and intellectual interest of a great novel." —Jeffrey Rosen, author of The Supreme The Personalities and Rivalries that Defined America
168 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 2011
About the author
Janet Malcolm
30 books540 followersJanet Malcolm was a journalist, biographer, collagist, and staff writer at The New Yorker. She is the author of
In the Freud Archives
and
The Crime of Sheila McGough
, as well as biographies of Gertrude Stein, Sylvia Plath, and Anton Chekhov.
The Modern Library chose her controversial book The Journalist and the Murderer — with its infamous first line — as one of the 100 best non-fiction works of the 20th century.
Her most recent book is Forty-one False Starts .
The Modern Library chose her controversial book The Journalist and the Murderer — with its infamous first line — as one of the 100 best non-fiction works of the 20th century.
Her most recent book is Forty-one False Starts .
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 147 reviews
January 9, 2022
“In life, no story is told exactly the same way twice. As the damp clay of actuality passes from hand to hand, it assumes different artful shapes. We expect it to. Only in trials is making it pretty equated with making it up…”
- Janet Malcolm, Iphigenia in Forest Hills
Janet Malcolm’s Iphigenia in Forest Hills is short and sleek and polished to a high gleam. In terms of technical precision, its “anatomy” of a New York City murder trial in 2009 is a flawless example of the craft of true-crime journalism. Artfully structured with a fractured chronology that bounces around in time, filled with devastatingly glib character assessments, and dotted with well-honed sentences designed to land with maximum impact, Iphigenia in Forest Hills has an air of impeccability about it. I enjoyed it immensely, finishing it in the course of a day. Yet for all that, it started to fade from memory almost as soon as I closed the covers for the last time.
Starting life as a New Yorker article, Iphigenia in Forest Hills covers the murder trial of Mazoltuv Borukhova and Mikhail Mallayev. Both were implicated in the murder of orthodontist Daniel Malakov, Borukhova’s estranged husband. Mallayev was the supposed hitman, gunning down Malakov in a park, as he was set to exchange physical custody of his four year-old daughter with his wife. Borukhova, a doctor, was accused of hiring Mallayev.
The motive, as Malcolm discusses – in a rather infuriating trip into Family Court – was a judge’s apparently-random decision to remove the little girl from her mother’s home and place her with her father.
Malcolm is a fantastic writer, known for delivering lines with punch and verve. Iphigenia in Forest Hills is no exception. She is consistently readable, even – perhaps especially – when she is making incredibly broad assertions about the legal system based wholly on her own anecdotal observations. Some might find it off-putting, the way she casually tosses off her weighty conclusions, but I rather liked it. I don’t want to read an anonymous book. I want to read a book by an author who has a certain style, a certain attitude. You don’t need to read Malcolm’s name on the cover to know when you’ve stumbled onto her work.
As I noted above, Malcolm does not hew to a linear chronology. Instead, the first page starts with the defense putting Borukhova on the stand to testify in her own defense. From there she loops back, then jumps forward, all a little dizzyingly, but never in such a way that you lose sight of the process.
For me, the highlights of Iphigenia in Forest Hills were Malcolm’s thumbnail sketches. For instance, she writes of the prosecutor:
Of the judge, a prosecutor-friendly jurist, she pithily notes:
Though I came for the zingers, I stayed for Malcolm’s perceptiveness. She followed the trial closely, and her descriptions of the big moments – the cross examination of an expert witness; key rulings made by the judge; a rushed closing statement – ring true.
For all its qualities, though, Iphigenia in Forest Hills lacked something ineffable. Malcolm connects with just about every blow she sets out to unleash, yet they fail to generate anything resembling a lasting impact.
One reason, I suspect, is that neither the two defendants nor the victim come across as likeable or sympathetic. Mallayev, the triggerman, is an inert lump, his fractured English like a parody of a Russian mobster. Borukhova, the desperate mother – an enraged Clytemnestra, in Malcolm’s formulation – is manipulative and strange. The victim, Malakov, is barely mentioned, and we see him only indirectly, through the allegations against him by Borukhova, that he was a domestic abuser, a pedophile.
Malcolm’s inability to humanize these three is partly a function of their backgrounds. As Russian immigrants who were also Bukharan Jews, they were only partly assimilated, and separated by the barriers of an orthodox religion and the necessity for a translator.
Partly, though, they just don’t seem like super great people. The families, especially, make compassion difficult. Both the Borukhovas and the Malakovs cultivated dark grudges against each other. To a certain extent, this makes sense. On the other hand, there comes a time when you start to wonder if there is any grief at all, beneath all that anger. Both sides lack the ability to recognize a tragedy; instead, they see only a vendetta.
Another issue I had with Iphigenia in Forest Hills is that it felt reported, rather than lived.
Immediately before picking this up, I read Joe McGinniss’s Fatal Vision, which Malcolm famously dissected with an extremely sharp literary scalpel. Fatal Vision has massive flaws, flaws that are embodied by its author. With that said, there is no doubting the effort that McGinniss made to bore deep into his subject case.
There is no such depth on display here.
The best true crime burrows into the heart and soul of humankind. The best true crime recognizes that most criminals are frighteningly similar to us. Not monsters, but fellow travelers fated to journey on a darker path. The best true crime corrals powerful emotions: the aching mystery of an unsolved crime; the anxiety-inducing need to free an innocent man; the weighty, ever-long melancholia of a murder victim’s family.
Iphigenia in Forest Hills did not spark any emotional response from me. There is much in it to admire, but it is too cold, too distant, to be really memorable.
- Janet Malcolm, Iphigenia in Forest Hills
Janet Malcolm’s Iphigenia in Forest Hills is short and sleek and polished to a high gleam. In terms of technical precision, its “anatomy” of a New York City murder trial in 2009 is a flawless example of the craft of true-crime journalism. Artfully structured with a fractured chronology that bounces around in time, filled with devastatingly glib character assessments, and dotted with well-honed sentences designed to land with maximum impact, Iphigenia in Forest Hills has an air of impeccability about it. I enjoyed it immensely, finishing it in the course of a day. Yet for all that, it started to fade from memory almost as soon as I closed the covers for the last time.
Starting life as a New Yorker article, Iphigenia in Forest Hills covers the murder trial of Mazoltuv Borukhova and Mikhail Mallayev. Both were implicated in the murder of orthodontist Daniel Malakov, Borukhova’s estranged husband. Mallayev was the supposed hitman, gunning down Malakov in a park, as he was set to exchange physical custody of his four year-old daughter with his wife. Borukhova, a doctor, was accused of hiring Mallayev.
The motive, as Malcolm discusses – in a rather infuriating trip into Family Court – was a judge’s apparently-random decision to remove the little girl from her mother’s home and place her with her father.
Malcolm is a fantastic writer, known for delivering lines with punch and verve. Iphigenia in Forest Hills is no exception. She is consistently readable, even – perhaps especially – when she is making incredibly broad assertions about the legal system based wholly on her own anecdotal observations. Some might find it off-putting, the way she casually tosses off her weighty conclusions, but I rather liked it. I don’t want to read an anonymous book. I want to read a book by an author who has a certain style, a certain attitude. You don’t need to read Malcolm’s name on the cover to know when you’ve stumbled onto her work.
As I noted above, Malcolm does not hew to a linear chronology. Instead, the first page starts with the defense putting Borukhova on the stand to testify in her own defense. From there she loops back, then jumps forward, all a little dizzyingly, but never in such a way that you lose sight of the process.
For me, the highlights of Iphigenia in Forest Hills were Malcolm’s thumbnail sketches. For instance, she writes of the prosecutor:
He is a short, plump man with a mustache, who walks with the quick darting movements of a bantam cock and has a remarkably high voice, almost like a woman’s, which at moments of excitement rises to the falsetto of a phonograph record played at the wrong speed…In his winter outerwear – a black calf-length coat and a black fedora – he could be taken for a Parisian businessman or a Bulgarian psychiatrist…
Of the judge, a prosecutor-friendly jurist, she pithily notes:
Hanophy is a man of seventy-four with a small head and a large body and the faux-genial manner that American petty tyrants cultivate.
Though I came for the zingers, I stayed for Malcolm’s perceptiveness. She followed the trial closely, and her descriptions of the big moments – the cross examination of an expert witness; key rulings made by the judge; a rushed closing statement – ring true.
For all its qualities, though, Iphigenia in Forest Hills lacked something ineffable. Malcolm connects with just about every blow she sets out to unleash, yet they fail to generate anything resembling a lasting impact.
One reason, I suspect, is that neither the two defendants nor the victim come across as likeable or sympathetic. Mallayev, the triggerman, is an inert lump, his fractured English like a parody of a Russian mobster. Borukhova, the desperate mother – an enraged Clytemnestra, in Malcolm’s formulation – is manipulative and strange. The victim, Malakov, is barely mentioned, and we see him only indirectly, through the allegations against him by Borukhova, that he was a domestic abuser, a pedophile.
Malcolm’s inability to humanize these three is partly a function of their backgrounds. As Russian immigrants who were also Bukharan Jews, they were only partly assimilated, and separated by the barriers of an orthodox religion and the necessity for a translator.
Partly, though, they just don’t seem like super great people. The families, especially, make compassion difficult. Both the Borukhovas and the Malakovs cultivated dark grudges against each other. To a certain extent, this makes sense. On the other hand, there comes a time when you start to wonder if there is any grief at all, beneath all that anger. Both sides lack the ability to recognize a tragedy; instead, they see only a vendetta.
Another issue I had with Iphigenia in Forest Hills is that it felt reported, rather than lived.
Immediately before picking this up, I read Joe McGinniss’s Fatal Vision, which Malcolm famously dissected with an extremely sharp literary scalpel. Fatal Vision has massive flaws, flaws that are embodied by its author. With that said, there is no doubting the effort that McGinniss made to bore deep into his subject case.
There is no such depth on display here.
The best true crime burrows into the heart and soul of humankind. The best true crime recognizes that most criminals are frighteningly similar to us. Not monsters, but fellow travelers fated to journey on a darker path. The best true crime corrals powerful emotions: the aching mystery of an unsolved crime; the anxiety-inducing need to free an innocent man; the weighty, ever-long melancholia of a murder victim’s family.
Iphigenia in Forest Hills did not spark any emotional response from me. There is much in it to admire, but it is too cold, too distant, to be really memorable.
May 28, 2021
The Journalist and the Murderer is a great true crime book by Janet Malcolm in which she explores the ethics of what a reporter owes to his subject. Joe McGinnis tricks Jeffrey MacDonald into giving him unlimited access to him while he is undergoing a murder trial for the killing of his family. What McGinnis doesn't tell MacDonald is that his book Fatal Vision, which became a best seller, is not advocating his innocence. He led MacDonald to believe that so he could continue interviewing him, but McGinnis thinks he's guilty and says so in his book.
This slim volume is another true crime book by her: this time it deals with what happens to a murder case in the court system. A doctor is accused of killing her orthodontist husband over a custody battle for their little girl. Malcolm looks with unflinching honesty at not corruption in the court officers, but mostly incompetence, hubris, bias, and callousness. No one wins, justice is not served and the child suffers the most.
This slim volume is another true crime book by her: this time it deals with what happens to a murder case in the court system. A doctor is accused of killing her orthodontist husband over a custody battle for their little girl. Malcolm looks with unflinching honesty at not corruption in the court officers, but mostly incompetence, hubris, bias, and callousness. No one wins, justice is not served and the child suffers the most.
October 14, 2021
4 Stars
August 18, 2025
https://kansasbooks.blogspot.com/2025...
“La fragilidad humana sigue siendo moneda de cambio y la maldad, el impulso que anima al periodista. Un juicio proporciona oportunidades únicas a un periodista despiadado. Los periodistas que asisten juntos a un juicio prolongado desarrollan una camaradería especial que nace del buen animo compartido: sus artículos se escriben solos; basta con tirar de la fruta madura que cuelga de los atroces relatos de los letrados. Pueden sentarse tranquilamente y disfrutar de la función.”
Hacia tiempo que quería leer algo de Janet Malcolm aunque no sea mi tipo de lectura habitual pero es cierto que a veces tienes que salir de tu zona de confort para conocer otras aproximaciones literarias, y el hecho de que Janet Malcolm fuera sobre todo periodista, no la hace menos literaria. Me llamaba la atención la fama que tenía por sus enfoques críticos sobre el periodismo y lo que me interesaba sobre todo, era ver si era capaz de cuestionar las convenciones éticas a las que se enfrenta todos los días el periodismo. En algún momento aborda la cuestión de la fragilidad humana contrapuesta a la objetividad de la narración. Somos testigos todos los días de como las noticias nos llegan ya manipuladas y nunca estamos del todo seguros de esta objetividad en beneficio del morbo y del sensacionalismo y en detrimento de esta fragilidad humana. Janet Malcolm que había seguido un juicio para el New Yorker donde la doctora Borujova es enjuiciada por haber contratado a un asesino para matar a su ex marido Daniel Malakov, tras haber perdido ella la custodia de su hija Michelle, convierte este libro en el testimonio de su perspectiva, no solo como periodista a la hora de analizar la objetividad con que se cuentan estas noticias, sino que el libro también sirve como análisis del sistema judicial americano en el que viene a decir que la verdad es lo que menos importará, sino que la puesta en escena de un circo mediático es lo único que acaba valiendo. El elenco de actores de este show, letrados, acusados, jurado, testigos, estenógrafos, intérpretes y jueces, acudiran todos los días a una obra de teatro donde se está juzgando, en este caso, a dos personas de asesinato, y aquí comenzarán a confluir una serie de factores en la que la verdad se verá distorsionada.
“En la vida ninguna historia se cuenta dos veces exactamente de la misma manera. Va cobrando formas distintas conforme la arcilla de la actualidad pasa de mano en mano. Y no nos sorprende. Solo en los juicios esto se equipara con la falsedad. “
El crimen que sucede frente a la hija de cuatro años se convierte en una especie de circo mediático cuando llega a los tribunales. Lo que añade una dimensión cultural y comunitaria al tema es el hecho de que sus protagonistas forman parte de una comunidad religiosa cerrada de judíos bujaries de Queens, con normas muy rígidas en torno a la familia, el matrimonio y el estatus y esto le servirá a Janet Malcolm no solo para reflexionar sobre el sistema judicial sino sobre la vulnerabilidad del individuo frente a este sistema judicial, en este caso el de la supuesta asesina: una madre que lucha por conservar a su hija y termina sentada en un tribunal acusada de un crimen (“Había recurrido al Estado en busca de ayuda y el Estado se la había proporcionado, pero, a cambio de su protección, le exigía el control de una parte de su vida, su maternidad”) y es de aquí de donde viene el titulo de este libro, porque la historia de Borujova, su marido asesinado y su hija Michelle, evoca la tragedia griega. Según Esquilo, Clitemnestra se ve obligada a asesinar a Agamenón en parte para vengar la muerte de su hija Ifigenia, que fue sacrificada por su padre para triunfar en la guerra. “Estúpida, estúpida, ¿qué has hecho? No volverás a ver a Michelle nunca.” En este aspecto Janet Malcolm muestra un gran refinamiento enlazando la figura de Ifigenia con la de Michelle, la verdadera víctima de este embrollo, sacrificada en aras de intereses orquestados por adultos porque desde el momento en que sus padres entran en conflicto y uno de los dos acaba asesinado, ya está sacrificada como lo fue Ifigenia. Janet Malcolm está continuamente poniendo en evidencia su propio papel en el relato, el de periodista que se debe a la objetividad, y de alguna forma y a través de este análisis, expresa lo difícil que será el límite entre ficción, representación y verdad, expondrá todos los puntos, los fallos del sistema judicial en el que las víctimas siempre serán los más frágiles, y donde el poder de la manipulación será el auténtico progagonista, sobre todo también viene a reflejar que el ser humano no es un autómata y que por defecto siempre tomará partido, forma parte de la naturaleza humana.
“En una sala judicial nadie debe ir con nadie. Pero todos lo llevamos en la sangre: tomamos partido igual que respiramos. “
Lo que hace Janet Malcolm es periodismo literario porque el texto tiene ritmo y lo va guiando de tal forma que el propio lector tiene que ir tomando decisiones. “El periodismo es una cuestion de confianza. Los periodistas no nos retorcemos las manos ni nos rasgamos las vestiduras ante los delitos y las tragedias sin sentido que nos proporcionan nuestras noticias. Explicamos y acusamos.” Janet Malcolm da los datos de esta madeja de lana enmarañada pero no da las respuestas porque le interesa más el proceso y cómo se intenta construir la verdad en un tribunal..., la verdad estará muy escondida e incluso ninguno de los actores de este circo sepa realmente dónde está esa verdad. Es interesante como una vez llegado al final, lo que nos viene a decir Janet Malcolm es que desconfíemos de las verdades absolutas, del relato oficial que se escuda bajo las bases del poder y la manipulación. La autora insiste en la subjetividad del autor pero también es verdad que no construye sus personajes como personajes de ficción, aunque si les da entidad a la hora de situarlos. Su estilo frío y analítico va revelando las grietas de un sistema en el que la fragilidad humana apenas es contemplada y cuestiona tanto el sensacionalismo del periodismo fácil como a nosotros a la hora de dejarnos manipular sin interpretar los hechos como se merecerían
“Los expedientes judiciales no revelan lo que en realidad estaba ocurriendo entre Borujova y Malakov mientras su matrimonio se desintegraba. Los expedientes judiciales son una burda alegoría de la mala fe, poblada de personajes exagerados y unidimensionales. Pese a todo, algo de verdad se filtra en ellos, como sucede con todo lo que se escribe o se dice.”
♫♫♫ Lullaby - The Cure ♫♫♫
January 20, 2021
I was deeply, deeply uncomfortable with this book. It is a really interesting and tragic story. It is also depicts events in a (to me) really interesting community that is not much covered in the media. Having said that, while I am sure Malcolm's intention is to puncture the Orientalist narratives that pervaded the trial coverage, I feel like that she in fact feeds into them. What else is the reader to make of passages like "she looked like a captive barbarian princess in a Roman triumphal procession"? Man, I feel like, don't call anyone a barbarian - unless they're Conan - is writing 101.
In addition I also found the classical allusions referenced in a way I deeply dislike - Iphigenia is the4 year old daughter of two parents involved in a custody battle who sees her father be shot in front of her no wait, is the daughter of Clytemnestra and Agamemnon who Agamemnon sacrifices to Artemis so the Mycenaean fleet can get a favourable wind to Troy -- sure, sometimes. Sometimes she is replaced by a deer and has a lively trade in sacrificing foreigners on the Crimean peninsula. Sometimes she is taken to her murder, deceived, kicking and screaming. Sometimes she walks as a warrior, happy to die for her polis. She is a complex character basically. As is Clytemnestra. So here, Malcolm's metaphor is not even a particularly apt one to my mind, but it only exists to signal how clever and educated Malcolm, and I think has the effect of making the custody dispute between Borukhova and Malakov seem more antiquated and more barbarous (there's that word again). And I think this is a really big problem, because part of the reason Borukhova couldn't get reasonable dealing with the court determining the custody of her daughter is because of these very ideas about her as a mother and woman.
In addition I also found the classical allusions referenced in a way I deeply dislike - Iphigenia is the
August 26, 2011
An engrossing blow-by-blow account of a very strange crime and trial involving very strange people by a writer known for her piercing critiques of journalists. This time Janet Malcolm takes on the court system (although her critique extends to reporters covering the trials) - and family law, including the courts overseeing ex-spouses warring over child custody.
In this particular case, there is one clear-cut loser - the child, who witnesses her dad's death at age 4. (And the dad who was murdered...) Malcolm is surprisingly sympathetic to the mother, who is accused of hiring her ex-husband's assassin and who, beyond that, doesn't have an appealing personality. I wasn't quite as sympathetic although the original custody decision did seem wrong-headed (at least according to Malcolm's account) and the lawyer appointed to represent the child did seem nuts and the judge in the murder trial did seem like a pompous jerk. The book - which I read part of originally in The New Yorker - raises thorny questions about family law, including how young children caught between warring parents should best be represented in court and if, at a minimum, the lawyers appointed to represent these poor kids have to actually meet their clients, ask what their wishes are, and pursue those in court.
I also had to do some reading up on the original Iphigenia....
November 23, 2020
My first court room drama! Made me really hate lawyers and judges.
March 3, 2019
3.5 rounded up
I've fast discovered that Janet Malcolm is a writer I can turn to when I want reliably engaging and well written non-fiction. In the past few weeks I've read The Journalist and the Murderer and The Silent Woman: Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes, and now this, and while I don't think any of these books are perfect I can't sing Malcolm's praises highly enough.
While I think this book is probably the weakest of the three I've read it still makes for an engrossing true crime read. If you're looking for answers on who committed the crime this isn't the place to find them - Malcolm's research raises more new question than it answers. A common criticism in other reviews is how elusive the accused (Mazoltuv Borukhova, a 35 year old doctor from the Bukharan-Jewish community in Forest Hills, Queens) is, which I would definitely agree with. But this book succeeds in Malcolm's access to and interviews of the peripheral characters related to the crime. This definitely won't be the last of Malcolm's writing I read.
I've fast discovered that Janet Malcolm is a writer I can turn to when I want reliably engaging and well written non-fiction. In the past few weeks I've read The Journalist and the Murderer and The Silent Woman: Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes, and now this, and while I don't think any of these books are perfect I can't sing Malcolm's praises highly enough.
While I think this book is probably the weakest of the three I've read it still makes for an engrossing true crime read. If you're looking for answers on who committed the crime this isn't the place to find them - Malcolm's research raises more new question than it answers. A common criticism in other reviews is how elusive the accused (Mazoltuv Borukhova, a 35 year old doctor from the Bukharan-Jewish community in Forest Hills, Queens) is, which I would definitely agree with. But this book succeeds in Malcolm's access to and interviews of the peripheral characters related to the crime. This definitely won't be the last of Malcolm's writing I read.
September 20, 2019
A fascinating book, one of Malcolm’s most riveting, details a bizarre murder trial that involves the Bukharan Central Asian Jews living in Forest Hills, Queens. My only criticism is that Malcolm has not updated the book to include the appeal, and Iphigenia’s fate, an appeal that was handled by Nathan Dershowitz.
A brief review of Wikipedia shows that one of the more prominent American Bukharan Jews is none other than Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson (from Janet Malcolm’s justly acclaimed *In the Freud Archives*.)
A brief review of Wikipedia shows that one of the more prominent American Bukharan Jews is none other than Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson (from Janet Malcolm’s justly acclaimed *In the Freud Archives*.)
May 24, 2011
Agamemnon had angered the goddess, Artemis, by bragging that he was a better hunter. To punish him, she becalmed his fleet as he attempted to reach Troy and defeat that city in battle. Desperate for victory Agamemnon promised he would do what ever Artemis desired if his fleet could move on to Troy. Artemis agreed to send the wind to fill the sails of his fleet if Agamemnon killed his daughter, Iphigenia. Agamemnon sent a message to Clytemnestra, telling her to bring Iphigenia to him so that she could be wed to Achilles. When mother and daughter arrive, Iphigenia dies and Agamemnon sails to Troy. Upon his return, Clytemnestra kills him for the loss of Iphigenia.
IPHIGENIA IN FOREST HILLS is a simpler story. In this case, Iphigenia is Michelle Malakov, a four year-old caught in a divorce and custody battle, that could not end well. Michelle was the daughter of Daniel Malakov, a very successful orthodontist in Queens, New York and Mazoltov Borukhova, a very successful internist. Until the birth of Michelle, family members described the couple as very much in love. Daniel was a romantic and he adored his wife, a woman of formidable intelligence and will. Daniel and Mazoltov, known as Marina, were Bukharan Jews, having emigrated from an area of the Soviet Union that disappeared after the break-up of the USSR. Instead of enriching the family, Michelle’s birth ended it because Marina would not share her daughter with anyone.
A divorce was inevitable and it was one of the worst the judge or the lawyers on both sides had had to deal with. Marina was her own worst enemy; her arrogance when questioned in court led, for a reason not explained, to Daniel being given custody of Michelle with Marina allowed visitation. Neither parent had asked for custody; both had assumed Michelle would live with Marina and Daniel would have a degree of shared custody. But when the judge gave Daniel custody, the death of the father became an inevitability.
Daniel and Marina came from a religious culture in which men and women did not choose their marital partners. Arranged marriages were the responsibility of matchmakers who would present potential partners to the parents of the intended couple and then to the two people most involved. Both the Malakov and Borukhova families did not want Daniel and Marina to marry, although the specifics of that are not given in the book. But Daniel and Marina, marrying within months of meeting, flouted that convention, two people in a modern world without the tools necessary to navigate it.
On the morning of October 28, 2007, Daniel Malakov left his office to bring Michelle to the playground at the local elementary school in order for her to spend time with her mother. As Daniel stood next to Michelle, a man stepped forward, took a gun out of the pocket of his jacket, and shot Daniel in the chest. Within moments, Daniel was dead. Marina took her daughter and ran, an instinctive reaction, to get the child away from the murder scene and the body of her father. The man with the gun was Mikhail Mallayev, Marina’s cousin by marriage, who had come from Georgia after agreeing to kill Daniel for $20,000.00.
The subtitle of the book by New Yorker author Janet Malcolm is “Anatomy Of A Murder Trial”. The book is only 155 pages and its focus is the trial so there isn’t any information about the police investigation. Even a person without any legal background can see significant mistakes made by both sides and some rulings by the judge that should have led to a mistrial or a successful appeal. But both of the accused were found guilty and even Alan Dershowitz could not prevail at the appeal. The book is worth reading because of its candid snapshots of how the system does, and doesn’t, work. As the author puts it, “She couldn’t have done it and she must have done it.”
To some degree, Malcolm gives a glimpse of life in the very closed community of the Bukharan Jews. The trial brought a great deal of publicity to a group who keeps carefully to themselves. Daniel and Marina were well-educated and were apparently aware of society outside their community. This is not true for many other groups of the most conservative branches of Orthodox Jews. For two years, I taught secular studies at a private school for Orthodox girls who would attend “seminary” for one year after graduation from high school and who then would be married to young men chosen by their parents. They had no knowledge of the outside world. Newspapers and television were not allowed in their homes and secular studies teachers were very restricted in the topics which could be discussed in class. The girls did not know about the attacks on 9/11. Marina Bukharov was allowed a much wider world and she used the information from the wider world to have her husband killed.
The Iphigenia in Forest Hills did not lose her life, but her mother killed her father, albeit a step removed, in order to get what she wanted. Whether in mythology or in Queens, both girls were pawns.
April 17, 2025
Currently reading Claire Dederer's MONSTERS and very on board with my new habit of loving lady intellectuals. I reread THE JOURNALIST AND THE MURDERER not long ago and flagged the fuck out of it; seeking more crime courtroom drama I landed on this. Malcolm has no mercy (re: an attorney "he dropped the unappetizing hit man from his maw and loped toward his more delectable prey") which makes for a wickedly satisfying read.
We go through life mis-hearing and mis-seeing and misunderstanding so that the stories we tell ourselves will add up.
Only in trials is making it pretty equated with making it up.
We go through life mis-hearing and mis-seeing and misunderstanding so that the stories we tell ourselves will add up.
Only in trials is making it pretty equated with making it up.
December 15, 2016
Janet Malcolm takes the title from “Iphigenia at Aulis” by Euripides in which King Agamemnon, leading the Greek army against Troy has been thwarted by the winds that refuse to blow, his men cooped up in ships that can’t leave the harbor. Agamemnon has been convinced that the only way that the wind will rise allowing his troopships to sail to Troy is to sacrifice is daughter, Iphigenia”. Iphigenia here is Michelle, the four-year old daughter of Daniel Malakov and Marina Borukhova who are in a fierce post-divorce custody battle. Marina is accused of hiring a cousin by marriage to kill Daniel, who is shot dead while at a playground with his daughter.
Michelle is Iphigenia, in this case a child whose welfare is used as a pretext in battles among adults, vicious battles indeed. Everyone hated Marina by the end of the trial as had many judges and court officials who had dealt with her in the custody case. Janet Malcolm seems to think that the evidence of Marina’s guilt was not persuasive, that the trial judge was biased against her (not to mention more interested in starting his vacation on time than seeing justice done or even running a fair and decorous courtroom) and that he clearly favored the prosecution. This last point seemed maddeningly obvious when the judge gave the prosecutor a weekend to prepare his closing argument while Marina’s lawyer had 12 hours.
The real subject of the book, something which Malcolm has approached from slightly different directions in wildly different settings, is the difference between a convincing narration of events accepted as true by courts and the public and that which is true to the participants in the events and, of course to the storyteller—Janet Malcolm. She is brilliant on journalist and journalism having created a lot of enemies in the profession by her ability to cut through the fiction of the objective chronicler simply telling it how it is.
No one is depicted as the way they think they really are. Malcolm’ protagonists, which might seem to be an odd term to use in non-fiction but as accurate as anything could be, are often outraged and feel betrayed by her when the book or article is published, thinking that by opening up to Malcolm they must have convinced her of their innocence/altruism/tolerance when they were actually giving her further insights that led to a depiction of them that outraged them. Malcolm has been sued, threatened, cursed, damned to hell and cut dead by those involved in events she has reported on. Everyone thinks she there for them, to tell their story and set the record straight when what Malcolm is always doing is showing how prejudice, ignorance and fear were much more important to the result of a court case or investigation than anything resembling truth.
Michelle is Iphigenia, in this case a child whose welfare is used as a pretext in battles among adults, vicious battles indeed. Everyone hated Marina by the end of the trial as had many judges and court officials who had dealt with her in the custody case. Janet Malcolm seems to think that the evidence of Marina’s guilt was not persuasive, that the trial judge was biased against her (not to mention more interested in starting his vacation on time than seeing justice done or even running a fair and decorous courtroom) and that he clearly favored the prosecution. This last point seemed maddeningly obvious when the judge gave the prosecutor a weekend to prepare his closing argument while Marina’s lawyer had 12 hours.
The real subject of the book, something which Malcolm has approached from slightly different directions in wildly different settings, is the difference between a convincing narration of events accepted as true by courts and the public and that which is true to the participants in the events and, of course to the storyteller—Janet Malcolm. She is brilliant on journalist and journalism having created a lot of enemies in the profession by her ability to cut through the fiction of the objective chronicler simply telling it how it is.
No one is depicted as the way they think they really are. Malcolm’ protagonists, which might seem to be an odd term to use in non-fiction but as accurate as anything could be, are often outraged and feel betrayed by her when the book or article is published, thinking that by opening up to Malcolm they must have convinced her of their innocence/altruism/tolerance when they were actually giving her further insights that led to a depiction of them that outraged them. Malcolm has been sued, threatened, cursed, damned to hell and cut dead by those involved in events she has reported on. Everyone thinks she there for them, to tell their story and set the record straight when what Malcolm is always doing is showing how prejudice, ignorance and fear were much more important to the result of a court case or investigation than anything resembling truth.
December 15, 2015
This is not a true crime book and Janet Malcolm is not an author who seeks to entertain. Nor is she the sort of author who fades into the background of her writing. More often than not, a critique of any of her books becomes a critique of her. Fortunately Malcolm is as ready to rumble as any star of the WWE. To read any of Malcolm's work for a dispassionate recitation of events is to be disappointed and to, well, miss the point. She seeks to understand what the events reveal about us. She does not stand on the sidelines and pretend to be unbiased - she has an opinion and she draws conclusions.
The bare facts are: Mazoltuv Borukhova is accused of hiring an assassin to murder his husband in front of her. Borukhova and the hired killer are put on trial, a highly imperfect trial in Malcolm's estimation. Her idiosyncratic take is on every page: "But rooting is in our blood; we take sides as we take breaths." It takes a bold writer to indulge in this herself: "That's what I think was going on. No one will ever be able to prove it. But that's exactly what happened."
Malcolm wants readers to see that we all impose our own interpretation on the testimony. We construct our own narrative, based on our own experiences and prejudices. We may seek the truth, but our version becomes the truth. "We explain and blame. We are connoisseurs of certainty." She offers her own version and, be warned, she is sympathetic to Borukhova. Malcolm wants to know what drove events and expands her search beyond what is said in court.
If you haven't like Malcolm's earlier books, you won't like this one. I have a soft spot for a writer who can sidle up to a prospective interview and offer the following reporter's come on "I went up to him and asked if Anna Freud's project ... had been an influence on his work." Combine that unashamedly intellectually approach with Malcolm's pointed ruminations on the impossibility of narrowing accountability for a crime into a narrative that will fit into a courtroom and you have a compelling, unsettling book.
The bare facts are: Mazoltuv Borukhova is accused of hiring an assassin to murder his husband in front of her. Borukhova and the hired killer are put on trial, a highly imperfect trial in Malcolm's estimation. Her idiosyncratic take is on every page: "But rooting is in our blood; we take sides as we take breaths." It takes a bold writer to indulge in this herself: "That's what I think was going on. No one will ever be able to prove it. But that's exactly what happened."
Malcolm wants readers to see that we all impose our own interpretation on the testimony. We construct our own narrative, based on our own experiences and prejudices. We may seek the truth, but our version becomes the truth. "We explain and blame. We are connoisseurs of certainty." She offers her own version and, be warned, she is sympathetic to Borukhova. Malcolm wants to know what drove events and expands her search beyond what is said in court.
If you haven't like Malcolm's earlier books, you won't like this one. I have a soft spot for a writer who can sidle up to a prospective interview and offer the following reporter's come on "I went up to him and asked if Anna Freud's project ... had been an influence on his work." Combine that unashamedly intellectually approach with Malcolm's pointed ruminations on the impossibility of narrowing accountability for a crime into a narrative that will fit into a courtroom and you have a compelling, unsettling book.
June 26, 2011
I love this writer's work although this is not her best book. Like Helen Garner, she often writes about interesting real-life events. This is a book about a real-life American woman accused of murdering her husband because of a custody dispute. The title comes from Greek mythology - Iphigenia was the daughter of Agamemnon and Clytemnestra who was ordered by the goddess Artemis to be sacrificed. What doesn't work about the story is the fact that it's hard to get a sense of the central character. What does work is the chilling underbelly which is about the kind of State-based interventions in the life of the small child at the centre of the story, the "Iphigenia". Like Graner, Malcolm places herself in the narrative and we follow her reactions along with the story.
September 2, 2020
This slim volume is unsatisfying in many ways:
It doesn't focus on the courtroom battle to satisfy law junkies.
It doesn't focus on the murder enough to satisfy true crime junkies.
It doesn't flesh out the unique culture of the Bukharan Jewish community in New York to satisfy those interested in anthropology.
The daughter who was allegedly the motive behind everything (hence the title) is barely a shadow in the pages. Her existence gets less page time than that of her court-ordered legal representative.
It doesn't focus on the courtroom battle to satisfy law junkies.
It doesn't focus on the murder enough to satisfy true crime junkies.
It doesn't flesh out the unique culture of the Bukharan Jewish community in New York to satisfy those interested in anthropology.
The daughter who was allegedly the motive behind everything (hence the title) is barely a shadow in the pages. Her existence gets less page time than that of her court-ordered legal representative.
September 24, 2017
Despite my engagement with this book, and completing it, I found Malcolm's crime reporting to be disjointed. Not as enthralling as other reviewers have made it out to be.
February 23, 2019
In "Iphigenia in Forest Hills", journalist Janet Malcolm has recounted the story of a murder trial in a completely dispassionate voice. That the writing could be taken almost entirely from a court reporter's records was done on purpose, I suppose, to give the reader a completely objective view of the case. However, it also places the reader at too much of a "remove" from the case or characters.
In 2007, a Bukharan-Jewish orthodontist, Daniel Malakov, was gunned down in a park, in front of his estranged wife and their 4 year old daughter. The daughter was the subject of a bitter custody case, and the wife, Marina Borukhova, was immediately the chief suspect in the murder. A relative-by-marriage to Borukhova, was tracked down by police and the two were charged with homicide and murder-for-hire. After a three week trial, both were found guilty of murder and sentenced to life imprisonment. The daughter went to live with her father's brother and his family.
Okay, most true-crime books are written with a lot of heated rhetoric. The victims - usually women - are always described as "beautiful", even if they're not, because "beautiful" victims are worth more press. In Malcolm's book, the convicted murderer is described as "beautiful", though "plain-at-best" seems to be more the truth. That one example of heated rhetoric is about the only one I could find in the book, and I suppose the book's publisher's sales team had the word put in there to "goose" the sales.
By reading Malcolm's book, I learned about the closely-knit Bukharan-Jewish community in New York, made up of Russian emigrants who arrived here in the 1980's and 1990's and settled in the Forest Hills area of Queens. Both the victim and his wife - who was an internist - chose the wrong partner-in-life and divorce was the answer to their problems. Their daughter was caught in the middle, custody given to the father in an inexplicable court rendering shortly before the murder.On a sunny day, the father was gunned down. Lots of fighting between the two families and the whole business told in a reporter's tone.
Now, I really don't know if writing a true-crime book in a dispassionate voice IS a bad thing. I certainly am glad I read Malcolm's book and it is well-written, in a technical sense. And there was a little, enough actually, spark to her writing that I sensed a slight favoritism towards the convicted wife and her troubles. But, I could have learned as much by reading the accounts from the New York Times articles about the murder and trial.
I will be interested to see other readers' takes on Malcolm's book. I can recommend it but I just wish I felt more connected to the characters and the case.
In 2007, a Bukharan-Jewish orthodontist, Daniel Malakov, was gunned down in a park, in front of his estranged wife and their 4 year old daughter. The daughter was the subject of a bitter custody case, and the wife, Marina Borukhova, was immediately the chief suspect in the murder. A relative-by-marriage to Borukhova, was tracked down by police and the two were charged with homicide and murder-for-hire. After a three week trial, both were found guilty of murder and sentenced to life imprisonment. The daughter went to live with her father's brother and his family.
Okay, most true-crime books are written with a lot of heated rhetoric. The victims - usually women - are always described as "beautiful", even if they're not, because "beautiful" victims are worth more press. In Malcolm's book, the convicted murderer is described as "beautiful", though "plain-at-best" seems to be more the truth. That one example of heated rhetoric is about the only one I could find in the book, and I suppose the book's publisher's sales team had the word put in there to "goose" the sales.
By reading Malcolm's book, I learned about the closely-knit Bukharan-Jewish community in New York, made up of Russian emigrants who arrived here in the 1980's and 1990's and settled in the Forest Hills area of Queens. Both the victim and his wife - who was an internist - chose the wrong partner-in-life and divorce was the answer to their problems. Their daughter was caught in the middle, custody given to the father in an inexplicable court rendering shortly before the murder.On a sunny day, the father was gunned down. Lots of fighting between the two families and the whole business told in a reporter's tone.
Now, I really don't know if writing a true-crime book in a dispassionate voice IS a bad thing. I certainly am glad I read Malcolm's book and it is well-written, in a technical sense. And there was a little, enough actually, spark to her writing that I sensed a slight favoritism towards the convicted wife and her troubles. But, I could have learned as much by reading the accounts from the New York Times articles about the murder and trial.
I will be interested to see other readers' takes on Malcolm's book. I can recommend it but I just wish I felt more connected to the characters and the case.
February 28, 2018
I rarely read true-crime/criminal procedure books but was intrigued by this Janet Malcolm work primarily based on the recently proliferation of true crime shows and podcasts like Serial. It took a moment to catch the story threads as Malcolm doesn't write in a typical beginning-middle-end style. Like most real-life stories, there is no neat or clean ending and that was frustrating but felt authentic.
February 8, 2020
The real villain of the piece is not the husband or the wife, or the wife's family or the husband's family, but the absurdities and incidentals of the supposed 'justice' system. They wrap up the trial because the Judge is scheduled to be in the Caribbean?! Some utter nutjob conspiracy theory lawyer is charged with deciding a four-year-old child's future?! It's wonderfully written, but it is a tragedy through and through.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
March 17, 2026
i was very appreciative of malcolm's easy investigative focus not on any of the violence done between persons in this case but on the violence done by the family/criminal courts and child welfare states against the families involved and particularly against borukhova and her child-- that this investigation extended well past the trial and into their lives as they were reshaped by incurious government actors
January 27, 2026
Janet Malcolm has something huge in common with Sofia Coppola which is that I can’t find any flaws in their work no matter how hard I try. I’m always left beyond pleased. Also a Czech born woman under the sign of cancer - cmon!
September 22, 2019
Jesus, poor Michelle. The legal system is infuriating.
January 7, 2023
books to read when ur homesick
April 17, 2021
A really short book about a murder trial. It does not give much background. It just reports and lets the reader draw conclusions. I was hoping for more.
June 5, 2026
Janet Malcolm was a talented journalist noted for both her exquisite writing prowess and her rather unusual honesty about the sordid ethics undergirding her profession. In her work — originally published as multi-part articles in venues like The New Yorker and then often clipped together and republished as short books — she explored themes like the manipulation, dishonesty, and the subtle psychological gamesmanship at the center of all relationships between journalists and their interview subjects; the warring wills and personas behind even the most abstract and rarefied debates within psychoanalytic theory; and the grimy voyeurism at the heart of all efforts at biography. A careful reading of her pieces also reveals a fourth preoccupation, a kind of ur-theme, which suffuses and grounds these others: the inescapable ambiguity of all human situations. Malcolm's exceptional sensitivity to this ambiguity — her admirable refusal to wave away, for the sake of any saccharine conceptions of either moral or aesthetic neatness, the often unsettling fact that different people can, for quite legitimate reasons, see the very same situation from irreconcilable points of view — is, I think, at least partly responsible for the spirit of irrepressible contrarianism which animated her career.
Alas, Iphigenia in Forest Hills falls far short of the impressive standard that Malcolm had set in her other work. This is not because the subject under discussion between its pages lacks any intrinsic interest. Briefly, the book tells the story of a murder trial that took place in 2007 in Forest Hills, a neighborhood in Queens, New York, embroiling therein members of the area's Bukharian Jewish community. A woman named Mazoltuv Borukhova stood accused of orchestrating the murder of her estranged husband, Daniel Malakov. Although it was Borukhova's cousin by marriage, Mikhail Mallayev, who ultimately pulled the trigger and brazenly killed Malakov in broad daylight near a children's playground, questions remained about whether Borukhova and Mallayev might have been having an affair, and further rumblings about Malakov's and Borukhova's marital troubles, ranging in form from salacious rumors to things more solid and better documented, only fueled speculation that Borukhova might have persuaded Mallayev to commit the murder.
Malakov and Borukhova, who were each doctors with their respective private practices, had been engaged in bitter and acrimonious divorce proceedings, initiated by the former, since 2005. As the prosecution argued, the major precipitating event that, with an inexorability worthy of Greek tragedy, pushed these matters toward their appalling consummation was the decision, reached on October 3, 2007 by New York State Supreme Court judge Sydney Strauss, to award full custody of Malakov's and Borukhova's four-year-old daughter Michelle to the former. Malakov was then murdered 25 days later on the morning of October 28.
Borukhova and Mallayev were eventually both convicted of the charges leveled against them for their roles in this crime. Nevertheless, as she did in The Journalist and the Murderer, Malcolm retains a sympathy for the condemned and attempts, if not to persuade us of Boruhkova's innocence, then at least to plant seeds of doubt in our minds about her guilt. Anyone who reads The Journalist and the Murderer — a book which I must ruefully admit is far more adroitly composed than Iphigenia in Forest Hills — must surely, from that moment on, raise up firm walls of suspicion against the seductions of the journalist's art of narrative storytelling. And since it is Malcolm herself who had so adeptly exposed these very seductions, she hardly has any standing to complain if she happens to be hoist with her own petard.
In certain respects, Malcolm's argument is unimpeachably persuasive. Throughout her book, Malcom attempts to paint a portrait of Robert Hanophy, the judge who presided over the Boruhkova-Mallayev trial, as a petty, capricious, irascible, peevish, tyrannical man whose soul is a cauldron of irrational biases and who probably delights in hurting and humiliating those whom he believes — whether for good reasons or not — to be guilty of criminal conduct. There is certainly some justice in this sketch. To cite only the most egregious example, Hanophy had demanded that the trial end before St. Patrick's Day. Because of the various delays and contingencies that inevitably mire down the proceedings of all trials like this one, this demand proved exceptionally difficult to satisfy and ultimately led Hanophy to insist that Borukhova's attorneys compose and deliver their summations of their case after only 24 hours of preparation time, on a Friday. The prosecution, by contrast, was given the entire weekend to do the same, which put the defense at a distinct disadvantage.
What on earth could have possessed Hanophy to issue such a manifestly unreasonable request? Well, you see, the good judge had planned to go away on vacation on St. Patrick's Day, and he simply wasn't going to allow something so inconsequential as a murder trial, upon whose result the lives of multiple people hinged, to disrupt those solemn, sacred, and unalterable plans. It is impossible not to stand in solidarity with Malcolm when she fulminates against such contemptible idiocy. Since the universal right to a fair trial for all those who have been accused of crimes is one of the indispensable bulwarks of civilization, Hanophy's ridiculously egocentric and purblind decision simply cannot be condemned harshly enough. Even if Borukhova did plot to kill her husband — as I ultimately believe she did — there is no excusing the judge's behavior.
Malcolm's remarks on the fallibility of fingerprint analysis and her reference to the 2004 case of Brandon Mayfield, a lawyer from Oregon who was falsely accused of participating in the 2004 Madrid bombings because his fingerprints were incorrectly found to match the partial prints found on a bag of detonators near the site of the attack, also deserve serious consideration. Hanophy's moves to shut down the defense's lines of questioning about the validity of fingerprint analysis — at least when only partial prints are available — was similarly inexcusable. I do not think that allowing the defense to pursue this line of questioning would have altered the result of the trial — the evidence pointing to Mallayev as the one who shot and killed Malakov is mountainous — but the defense should have been permitted to try its strategy.
Before we all collectively rise to garland Malcolm with laurels for her heroism, however, I propose that we carefully consider another matter. Among the many strange personages who fill Malcolm's story is one David Schnall, the court-appointed legal guardian of Borukhova's and Malakov's daughter Michelle. Malcolm insists that Schnall clearly does not like Borukhova — and perhaps he does not — but what is surely at least equally clear is that Malcolm does not like Schnall. Malcolm recounts a phone conversation she had with Schnall in which he did what so many are bizarrely apt to do when in conversation with journalists: He blabbed interminably and said things that it was probably unwise for him to say. Specifically, Schnall launched into an apparently unprompted recounting of a variety of conspiracy theories, and Malcolm thought this to be so outlandish as to reflect poorly on Schnall's sanity. "Then," as Malcolm says:
Scaring was one of Borukhova's attorneys. After receiving Malcom's notes of her conversation with Schnall, he predictably tried to get Schnall dismissed as an unreliable witness and removed as little Michelle's guardian, motions which Hanophy imperiously denied.
Now, as anyone who knows anything about the American (and, indeed, Western) legal system will testify, jury members are explicitly instructed to disregard all extraneous personal factors when evaluating the guilt or innocence of a defendant or the credibility of a witness. Ideally, their deliberations should be free of personal bias and resolutely focused upon the facts of the case and the facts alone, ignoring such incidental matters as the personal beliefs — when those beliefs are irrelevant to the case at hand — of said defendants or witnesses. Of course, human nature being what it is, it is quite impossible to realize this ideal, but it is the ideal toward which our justice system is oriented.
More importantly, by pointing to the shamefully self-centered behavior of the judge with respect to his vacation plans, Malcolm is implicitly criticizing these ideals as laughably untenable. But surely there is something deeply preposterous in the idea of a journalist criticizing idealized legal norms which she herself, by her own behavior, has self-righteously worked to undermine? One can only quote Malcolm's own famous words, written in another context, back to her:
Here, we see Malcolm's rhetorical ministrations and manipulations emerging in their most subtly insidious form. After the conclusion of the trial, once Borukhova and Mallayev had been convicted, Malcolm recounts her interviews with a few of the jurors. Among other things, some jurors complained that Borukhova had appeared far too stuffy, supercilious, and unemotional when she had gone to the witness stand, an impression which Malcolm, with dextrous rhetorical sleight-of-hand, dismisses as invidious and unfair. But is the impression which she attempted to create of David Schnall any less invidious or unfair? After all, is it not possible that Schnall could be an entirely adequate legal guardian to Michelle Malakov, despite believing in a few unusual conspiracy theories?
Malcolm chooses to depict Borukhova's manner in court, which some jurors considered haughty and off-putting, as dignified, repeatedly emphasizing, for calculated rhetorical effect, that Borukhova is an educated medical professional. But if Borukhova's status as an educated medical professional makes it unlikely that she might have orchestrated her husband's demise, why does it not similarly strain credulity to believe, as Borukhova alleged, that Daniel Malakov, who was also an educated medical professional, battered his wife and sexually molested his daughter? Malcolm does not deign to explain.
For there is a rather gargantuan difficulty, arising precisely from Borukhova's accusations of child molestation against Malakov, that any narrative arguing for Borukhova's innocence must contend with. In their family court trial of 2005, Borukhova originally brought witnesses who testified to having witnessed these acts of abuse. Later, however, the witnesses not only retracted their testimony but claimed that they had been intimidated by Borukhova's sisters into making it. Malcolm, to her credit, does mention this fact, but only so that she might later dismiss it. Indeed, in reading Malcolm's account of this rather shameful incident — and especially her strenuous insistence that Borukhova is, after all, a flawed figure who did some things she ought not to have done — one senses that Malcolm is only being strategically honest: that is, that she is telling the reader an uncomfortable truth (while minimizing its significance) so that she might win his trust and later use it to sneak a number massive lies past him.
If a woman has truly been abused by her husband — or if, God forbid, that woman's daughter has been molested by the same man — how could it possibly aid her in her quest for justice to coerce witnesses into supporting her version of events? If nothing else, this is a horrendously reckless strategy, which, if unveiled, would swiftly destroy all sympathy for the woman making the accusations. Malcolm, perhaps realizing the untenability of her position, later shifts tactics and tries to suggest that perhaps Malakov did not sexually abuse Michelle but had beaten Borukhova instead. If so, why did Borukhova not merely accuse Malakov of beating her? It is difficult to escape the suggestion that Borukhova believed she might win sympathy for herself by casting her antagonist as a child abuser. But if so, was her aim to achieve justice or to manipulate events to her advantage?
And as for Malcolm's attempt to cast doubt on fingerprint analysis and possibly exonerate Mallayev, these flounder because Malcolm offers no plausible alternative theory on how else Malakov could have been killed. There are a few vague gestures toward some kind of mafia plot against Malakov, but no real evidence is offered. Of course, Malcom might insist that, in a criminal trial, it is not the responsibility of the defense to provide an alternative theory for how the crime occurred, but that argument is only effective if we insist that fingerprint analysis is totally worthless as a forensic technique. If is merely imperfect, then, before we may rightly jettison its deliverances completely, we must have other considerations before us which can override the limited evidence that those deliverances provide. Malcolm does not present these.
These and other tortuous windings in the Borukhova-Mallayev case overwhelmingly reveal it to teem with the human, all-too-human ambiguity that has so long and so deeply fascinated Malcolm. And though she does, when all is said and done, leave plenty of reasons to doubt even her own point of view, that point of view remains. By placing a series of interviews with Malakov's family members late into her book, she gives everything a curious lack of finality, a somewhat pusillanimous, limbo-like quality which, in fairness to Malcolm, it may have been her intention to create all along. If there is any firm thesis in the book, it is that many of our most cherished and most foundational beliefs about the legal system and about how it should function — that all defendants should receive fair trials that scrupulously follow procedure, that legal judgment should be rendered without passion and in strict observance only of what is directly relevant, and so on — are, when placed in the shadow of human frailty, rather risible.
But even here, it must be said that, in her characterization of the legal system, Malcolm attacks a straw man. After all, who, other than the unsalvageably naive, actually believes that our legal system — or any legal system that is staffed by mere fallible creatures — can ever operate without admixture of passion or irrationality? The men who established the characteristic rules and procedures of our civilization's system of law, like the right of lawyers to voir dire potential jurors or to object in court to the moves of their adversaries, did not do so because they believed human beings to have unmitigated access to infallible truth. After all, if God, in his infinite mercy, were to see fit to inform us of the guilt or innocence of every potential criminal, then we would not need to hold criminal trials. The whole institution of trial by jury is predicated on the assumption that the truth about messy human events, if it is to emerge at all, can only emerge via a rough-and-tumble dialectical process of moves and counter-moves, objections and counter-objections, points and counterpoints, narratives and counter-narratives, in which incompatible perspectives are synthesized and whatever validity exists in any of them is laboriously and strainingly distilled. This may not produce a just outcome each and every time — that blissful result is not be had in this vale of tears — but, in the long run, over a large enough sample of cases, it tends to work fairly well. This argument — the real defense of the Western legal system — Malcolm leaves untouched.
Ultimately, though Iphigenia in Forest Hills is passably well written, its prose never truly shines. Malcolm was undeniably capable of putting on a virtuoso performance when she truly wanted to do so, but one simply doesn't see that here. And while the twists and turns of this tumultuous trial offered abundant fodder to her hobby horse of all-pervading, inescapable human ambiguity, the ultimate result nevertheless has an ineffable blandness about it. Malcolm's defenses of Ted Hughes and Jeffrey MacDonald were interesting to read — indeed, nearly impossible to put down — but her advocacy for Mazoltuv Borukhova seems only to reek of contrarianism for the mere sake of contrarianism.
Alas, Iphigenia in Forest Hills falls far short of the impressive standard that Malcolm had set in her other work. This is not because the subject under discussion between its pages lacks any intrinsic interest. Briefly, the book tells the story of a murder trial that took place in 2007 in Forest Hills, a neighborhood in Queens, New York, embroiling therein members of the area's Bukharian Jewish community. A woman named Mazoltuv Borukhova stood accused of orchestrating the murder of her estranged husband, Daniel Malakov. Although it was Borukhova's cousin by marriage, Mikhail Mallayev, who ultimately pulled the trigger and brazenly killed Malakov in broad daylight near a children's playground, questions remained about whether Borukhova and Mallayev might have been having an affair, and further rumblings about Malakov's and Borukhova's marital troubles, ranging in form from salacious rumors to things more solid and better documented, only fueled speculation that Borukhova might have persuaded Mallayev to commit the murder.
Malakov and Borukhova, who were each doctors with their respective private practices, had been engaged in bitter and acrimonious divorce proceedings, initiated by the former, since 2005. As the prosecution argued, the major precipitating event that, with an inexorability worthy of Greek tragedy, pushed these matters toward their appalling consummation was the decision, reached on October 3, 2007 by New York State Supreme Court judge Sydney Strauss, to award full custody of Malakov's and Borukhova's four-year-old daughter Michelle to the former. Malakov was then murdered 25 days later on the morning of October 28.
Borukhova and Mallayev were eventually both convicted of the charges leveled against them for their roles in this crime. Nevertheless, as she did in The Journalist and the Murderer, Malcolm retains a sympathy for the condemned and attempts, if not to persuade us of Boruhkova's innocence, then at least to plant seeds of doubt in our minds about her guilt. Anyone who reads The Journalist and the Murderer — a book which I must ruefully admit is far more adroitly composed than Iphigenia in Forest Hills — must surely, from that moment on, raise up firm walls of suspicion against the seductions of the journalist's art of narrative storytelling. And since it is Malcolm herself who had so adeptly exposed these very seductions, she hardly has any standing to complain if she happens to be hoist with her own petard.
In certain respects, Malcolm's argument is unimpeachably persuasive. Throughout her book, Malcom attempts to paint a portrait of Robert Hanophy, the judge who presided over the Boruhkova-Mallayev trial, as a petty, capricious, irascible, peevish, tyrannical man whose soul is a cauldron of irrational biases and who probably delights in hurting and humiliating those whom he believes — whether for good reasons or not — to be guilty of criminal conduct. There is certainly some justice in this sketch. To cite only the most egregious example, Hanophy had demanded that the trial end before St. Patrick's Day. Because of the various delays and contingencies that inevitably mire down the proceedings of all trials like this one, this demand proved exceptionally difficult to satisfy and ultimately led Hanophy to insist that Borukhova's attorneys compose and deliver their summations of their case after only 24 hours of preparation time, on a Friday. The prosecution, by contrast, was given the entire weekend to do the same, which put the defense at a distinct disadvantage.
What on earth could have possessed Hanophy to issue such a manifestly unreasonable request? Well, you see, the good judge had planned to go away on vacation on St. Patrick's Day, and he simply wasn't going to allow something so inconsequential as a murder trial, upon whose result the lives of multiple people hinged, to disrupt those solemn, sacred, and unalterable plans. It is impossible not to stand in solidarity with Malcolm when she fulminates against such contemptible idiocy. Since the universal right to a fair trial for all those who have been accused of crimes is one of the indispensable bulwarks of civilization, Hanophy's ridiculously egocentric and purblind decision simply cannot be condemned harshly enough. Even if Borukhova did plot to kill her husband — as I ultimately believe she did — there is no excusing the judge's behavior.
Malcolm's remarks on the fallibility of fingerprint analysis and her reference to the 2004 case of Brandon Mayfield, a lawyer from Oregon who was falsely accused of participating in the 2004 Madrid bombings because his fingerprints were incorrectly found to match the partial prints found on a bag of detonators near the site of the attack, also deserve serious consideration. Hanophy's moves to shut down the defense's lines of questioning about the validity of fingerprint analysis — at least when only partial prints are available — was similarly inexcusable. I do not think that allowing the defense to pursue this line of questioning would have altered the result of the trial — the evidence pointing to Mallayev as the one who shot and killed Malakov is mountainous — but the defense should have been permitted to try its strategy.
Before we all collectively rise to garland Malcolm with laurels for her heroism, however, I propose that we carefully consider another matter. Among the many strange personages who fill Malcolm's story is one David Schnall, the court-appointed legal guardian of Borukhova's and Malakov's daughter Michelle. Malcolm insists that Schnall clearly does not like Borukhova — and perhaps he does not — but what is surely at least equally clear is that Malcolm does not like Schnall. Malcolm recounts a phone conversation she had with Schnall in which he did what so many are bizarrely apt to do when in conversation with journalists: He blabbed interminably and said things that it was probably unwise for him to say. Specifically, Schnall launched into an apparently unprompted recounting of a variety of conspiracy theories, and Malcolm thought this to be so outlandish as to reflect poorly on Schnall's sanity. "Then," as Malcolm says:
I did something I have never done before as a journalist. I meddled with the story I was reporting. I entered it as a character who could affect its plot. I picked up the phone and called Stephen Scaring’s office. (pp. 68-69)
Scaring was one of Borukhova's attorneys. After receiving Malcom's notes of her conversation with Schnall, he predictably tried to get Schnall dismissed as an unreliable witness and removed as little Michelle's guardian, motions which Hanophy imperiously denied.
Now, as anyone who knows anything about the American (and, indeed, Western) legal system will testify, jury members are explicitly instructed to disregard all extraneous personal factors when evaluating the guilt or innocence of a defendant or the credibility of a witness. Ideally, their deliberations should be free of personal bias and resolutely focused upon the facts of the case and the facts alone, ignoring such incidental matters as the personal beliefs — when those beliefs are irrelevant to the case at hand — of said defendants or witnesses. Of course, human nature being what it is, it is quite impossible to realize this ideal, but it is the ideal toward which our justice system is oriented.
More importantly, by pointing to the shamefully self-centered behavior of the judge with respect to his vacation plans, Malcolm is implicitly criticizing these ideals as laughably untenable. But surely there is something deeply preposterous in the idea of a journalist criticizing idealized legal norms which she herself, by her own behavior, has self-righteously worked to undermine? One can only quote Malcolm's own famous words, written in another context, back to her:
Every journalist who is not too stupid or too full of himself to notice what is going on knows that what he does is morally indefensible.
Here, we see Malcolm's rhetorical ministrations and manipulations emerging in their most subtly insidious form. After the conclusion of the trial, once Borukhova and Mallayev had been convicted, Malcolm recounts her interviews with a few of the jurors. Among other things, some jurors complained that Borukhova had appeared far too stuffy, supercilious, and unemotional when she had gone to the witness stand, an impression which Malcolm, with dextrous rhetorical sleight-of-hand, dismisses as invidious and unfair. But is the impression which she attempted to create of David Schnall any less invidious or unfair? After all, is it not possible that Schnall could be an entirely adequate legal guardian to Michelle Malakov, despite believing in a few unusual conspiracy theories?
Malcolm chooses to depict Borukhova's manner in court, which some jurors considered haughty and off-putting, as dignified, repeatedly emphasizing, for calculated rhetorical effect, that Borukhova is an educated medical professional. But if Borukhova's status as an educated medical professional makes it unlikely that she might have orchestrated her husband's demise, why does it not similarly strain credulity to believe, as Borukhova alleged, that Daniel Malakov, who was also an educated medical professional, battered his wife and sexually molested his daughter? Malcolm does not deign to explain.
For there is a rather gargantuan difficulty, arising precisely from Borukhova's accusations of child molestation against Malakov, that any narrative arguing for Borukhova's innocence must contend with. In their family court trial of 2005, Borukhova originally brought witnesses who testified to having witnessed these acts of abuse. Later, however, the witnesses not only retracted their testimony but claimed that they had been intimidated by Borukhova's sisters into making it. Malcolm, to her credit, does mention this fact, but only so that she might later dismiss it. Indeed, in reading Malcolm's account of this rather shameful incident — and especially her strenuous insistence that Borukhova is, after all, a flawed figure who did some things she ought not to have done — one senses that Malcolm is only being strategically honest: that is, that she is telling the reader an uncomfortable truth (while minimizing its significance) so that she might win his trust and later use it to sneak a number massive lies past him.
If a woman has truly been abused by her husband — or if, God forbid, that woman's daughter has been molested by the same man — how could it possibly aid her in her quest for justice to coerce witnesses into supporting her version of events? If nothing else, this is a horrendously reckless strategy, which, if unveiled, would swiftly destroy all sympathy for the woman making the accusations. Malcolm, perhaps realizing the untenability of her position, later shifts tactics and tries to suggest that perhaps Malakov did not sexually abuse Michelle but had beaten Borukhova instead. If so, why did Borukhova not merely accuse Malakov of beating her? It is difficult to escape the suggestion that Borukhova believed she might win sympathy for herself by casting her antagonist as a child abuser. But if so, was her aim to achieve justice or to manipulate events to her advantage?
And as for Malcolm's attempt to cast doubt on fingerprint analysis and possibly exonerate Mallayev, these flounder because Malcolm offers no plausible alternative theory on how else Malakov could have been killed. There are a few vague gestures toward some kind of mafia plot against Malakov, but no real evidence is offered. Of course, Malcom might insist that, in a criminal trial, it is not the responsibility of the defense to provide an alternative theory for how the crime occurred, but that argument is only effective if we insist that fingerprint analysis is totally worthless as a forensic technique. If is merely imperfect, then, before we may rightly jettison its deliverances completely, we must have other considerations before us which can override the limited evidence that those deliverances provide. Malcolm does not present these.
These and other tortuous windings in the Borukhova-Mallayev case overwhelmingly reveal it to teem with the human, all-too-human ambiguity that has so long and so deeply fascinated Malcolm. And though she does, when all is said and done, leave plenty of reasons to doubt even her own point of view, that point of view remains. By placing a series of interviews with Malakov's family members late into her book, she gives everything a curious lack of finality, a somewhat pusillanimous, limbo-like quality which, in fairness to Malcolm, it may have been her intention to create all along. If there is any firm thesis in the book, it is that many of our most cherished and most foundational beliefs about the legal system and about how it should function — that all defendants should receive fair trials that scrupulously follow procedure, that legal judgment should be rendered without passion and in strict observance only of what is directly relevant, and so on — are, when placed in the shadow of human frailty, rather risible.
But even here, it must be said that, in her characterization of the legal system, Malcolm attacks a straw man. After all, who, other than the unsalvageably naive, actually believes that our legal system — or any legal system that is staffed by mere fallible creatures — can ever operate without admixture of passion or irrationality? The men who established the characteristic rules and procedures of our civilization's system of law, like the right of lawyers to voir dire potential jurors or to object in court to the moves of their adversaries, did not do so because they believed human beings to have unmitigated access to infallible truth. After all, if God, in his infinite mercy, were to see fit to inform us of the guilt or innocence of every potential criminal, then we would not need to hold criminal trials. The whole institution of trial by jury is predicated on the assumption that the truth about messy human events, if it is to emerge at all, can only emerge via a rough-and-tumble dialectical process of moves and counter-moves, objections and counter-objections, points and counterpoints, narratives and counter-narratives, in which incompatible perspectives are synthesized and whatever validity exists in any of them is laboriously and strainingly distilled. This may not produce a just outcome each and every time — that blissful result is not be had in this vale of tears — but, in the long run, over a large enough sample of cases, it tends to work fairly well. This argument — the real defense of the Western legal system — Malcolm leaves untouched.
Ultimately, though Iphigenia in Forest Hills is passably well written, its prose never truly shines. Malcolm was undeniably capable of putting on a virtuoso performance when she truly wanted to do so, but one simply doesn't see that here. And while the twists and turns of this tumultuous trial offered abundant fodder to her hobby horse of all-pervading, inescapable human ambiguity, the ultimate result nevertheless has an ineffable blandness about it. Malcolm's defenses of Ted Hughes and Jeffrey MacDonald were interesting to read — indeed, nearly impossible to put down — but her advocacy for Mazoltuv Borukhova seems only to reek of contrarianism for the mere sake of contrarianism.
June 16, 2011
In this spare volume, Malcolm recaps the trial of a young internist, Mazoltuv Borukhova, a member of the insular Bukharan-Jewish community of Forest Hills, Queens, who stands accused of hiring an assassin to murder her husband, Daniel Malakov, an orthodontist. Malcolm attacks the criminal justice system and the "hollowness of the presumption of innocence." The evidence against Dr. Borukhova was thin (e.g., 91 cell phone calls between Dr. Borukhova and the alleged hitman preceding the murder), but the prosecutor established a powerful motive for the killing: the estranged couple's young daughter was tragically and inexplicably placed in her father's custody just weeks before Daniel's murder. Malcolm, who clearly feels some affinity for Dr. Boruhova (despite the jury's distaste for the defendant because she was lacking in the requisite emotion), summarizes the case: "She couldn't have done it and she must have done it."
February 17, 2020
As the title indicates, Malcolm's true focus is not the murder trial of Mazoltov Borukhova for hiring a hit man to gun down her ex Daniel Malakov in a Forest Hills playground. Underlying all the descriptions of the testimony and characters involved in the trial is the reality that Michelle, their small daughter, is left parent-less by her father's murder and her mother's imprisonment. I found the description of the judge's insistence in sticking to a schedule so that he could end the trial and leave for a scheduled vacation (rather than attempt to elucidate the truth) chilling. Even more frightening is the control a child's legal guardian exercises over that child, even if he has no relationship with her, and his agenda may be at odds with what are the best interests of the child.
April 11, 2011
Quick, good read; very well written in a conversational style a la the New Yorker. This book was of particular interest to me since the murder in question happened about a block from my apartment. The author does a good job of criticizing the jury trial system--and many other aspects of the bureaucratic state--without going overboard. She manages to maintain the air of mystery throughout the book. The Bukharian Jewish community in Queens makes for interesting reading and I wish the author had spent more time talking about it. Like a lot of Russian novels, it was not always easy to keep the characters straight!
February 14, 2012
Noted journalist Janet Malcolm writes about the trial of Dr. Mazoltov Borukhova, accused of using a hitman, Mikhail Malleyev, to kill her ex-husband, orthodontist Daniel Malakov, who had been awarded custody of their young daughter Michelle by a judge. She exposes a lot of the problems with the legal system that convicted both Borukhova and Malleyev (both serving life sentences without parole) as well as opening a curtain on the insular Bukharan-Jewish community of Forest Hills. It's a fascinating read about a sordid situation--one shudders to think of what will become of Michelle after seeing her father killed before her eyes.
February 3, 2012
I found this book kind of flat. It reads like someone's notes from the courtroom gallery, but doesn't seem to really formulate a story with an end.
In being nonpartisan, Janet Malcolm more or less offloads the facts she's gathered and ends the book without making any of the players involved sympathetic (with the exception of the little girl, Michelle).
In being nonpartisan, Janet Malcolm more or less offloads the facts she's gathered and ends the book without making any of the players involved sympathetic (with the exception of the little girl, Michelle).
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