Angela Corwin's Attack on Maddie Schwartz is the novel's pivotal act of violence, the moment when the hidden hand behind Tessie Fine's murder finally surfaces. What begins as a neighborly gesture—Mrs. Corwin pressing a white cardboard bakery box tied with red-and-white string upon her visitor—erupts into a stabbing that nearly kills Maddie Schwartz. The attack does more than wound the reporter; it cracks open the Corwin family's secret, revealing that Angela Corwin was her son's accomplice in murder, and it catapults Maddie from an anonymous general assignment reporter into a woman whose name would be spoken on the evening news.

The Setting and the Ruse

The attack takes place in the Corwin home, where Maddie has come to visit Mrs. Corwin, the mother of Stephen Corwin, the young man who worked at the tropical fish store where Tessie Fine was killed. The visit appears to be a cordial social call. Mrs. Corwin, described as a tiny woman, returns from her kitchen carrying a white cardboard bakery box tied with red-and-white string, an offering of cookies for her guest. Maddie raises a hand in protest, saying she could not take so many, but the older woman insistently thrusts the box toward her. The gesture is so forceful that it feels almost as if Mrs. Corwin had tried to punch her in the midsection with the box, only to drop it. In that instant, Maddie notices something wrong: the box is red now, as if paint had gotten on it. The confusion resolves into terror as she sees the steak knife in Mrs. Corwin's tiny fist—not large, but large enough.

The Stabbing and the Confession

The first pass of the knife strikes Maddie in the midsection. Mrs. Corwin makes a second ineffectual pass at Maddie's chest, but this time Maddie manages to block her hand, grab her wrist, and twist it until the knife clatters to the floor. Mrs. Corwin screams in pain, and Maddie, experiencing a sensation wholly new to her—a supercharged energy, a clarity of thought—wonders why the woman is screaming when she is the one who has been stabbed. She is aware that she should be in pain, but there is no actual pain. Beneath the screams come words, sputtered and hissing: "Stupid, stupid, stupid. I was being kind, helping him put that girl out of her misery. I'm trying to be kind to you." The confession spills out in fragments. The mother had instructed him. Was it possible that she had even—"Just like the chickens on Auntie's farm, just like the chickens on Auntie's farm, what was the big deal? Easier than the chickens because the chickens run from you, before and after." In these disjointed phrases, the full horror of the crime emerges: Tessie Fine was alive when Angela Corwin arrived, and even if Stephen twisted the girl's neck, it was because his mother told him to.

The Aftermath and the Arrest

After the attack, Maddie calls the police, panting into the phone that a woman is trying to kill her. She goes blank when they ask for the address, then remembers it. Even as she speaks, she rummages through drawers looking for a knife of her own. Outside, she hears a car starting and sees Mrs. Corwin behind the wheel of an older-looking car, comically small. By the time the police arrive—seconds, minutes, hours later, she cannot tell—the burst of adrenaline that saved her is long gone. She presses a kitchen towel to her middle, watching the blood seep out, and tells herself she is going to be okay, almost certainly going to be okay. Mrs. Corwin does not get far; she crashes her car on Northern Parkway and is taken into custody for stabbing Maddie. She is expected to be arraigned for her role in the murder of Tessie Fine, her son's accomplice, who stabbed Maddie because she believed he had told her as much.

The Hospital and the Scoop

Maddie is taken to Sinai Hospital, the same hospital where she gave birth to her son. Milton Schwartz insists she stay overnight, and Maddie is almost weepily grateful to him for being there and taking charge. Later she learns that he knew having her spend even a night in the Pikesville house would mean resetting the clock on their legal separation, which would slow down his marriage to Ali Whoever. But she does not mind even when she understands; she does not want to be in the Pikesville house either, but she is too tender, in body and mind, to be alone in her apartment. Given a private room with her own television, she watches through the evening as the story unfolds. It is very satisfying, hearing her name in Wallace Wright's mouth. He describes her as a reporter on assignment—not accurate, but who cares. She had assigned herself. The paper's top editor calls her, ever so solicitous, making it clear that he expects Maddie, once recovered, would give the Star the scoop. "We'd have you write it in the first person," he says. "Face-to-face with a killer."

The Legacy of the Attack

The attack becomes the foundation of Maddie's entire career. She takes her first-person near-death story about Angela Corwin, parlays it into a job at the Beacon, and never looks back. By October 1985, when she speaks at The Woman's Club of Roland Park, her introduction describes her career as beginning with a harrowing first-person account of her near death at the hands of Angela Corwin, who was eventually convicted of the first-degree murder of Tessie Fine, a young Jewish girl killed in the tropical fish store where Corwin's son worked. Stephen Corwin was given the death penalty for his role in the crime, but that was changed to life after a US Supreme Court decision struck down most of the nation's death penalty laws in 1972. Maddie edits her introduction in her head, noting that this was not the copy she had provided—close, but embellished here and there. Although, yes, she was the one who had written the Star out of her official history. The Beacon was a little stuffy and dull after the Star, but it was willing to give her a chance as a reporter. The attack, which nearly killed her, becomes the story that defines her—the moment a middle-aged woman trying to sell her engagement ring transformed into a journalist whose name was spoken by Wallace Wright on the evening news.