Silent Witness - Hardcover

Patterson, Richard North

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0679450408 ISBN 13: 9780679450405

Publisher: Knopf, 1996

Synopsis

Attorney Tony Lord left his hometown and the bitter memories of his girlfriend's murder behind. Now, twenty-eight years later, he's pulled back to Lake City to defend his closest high school friend against a charge of homicide.

Sam Robb, the married father of two, is a local football legend. But he was also the last to see sixteen-year-old Marcie Calder alive, and as shocking forensic evidence at the trial reveals, he is the father of her unborn child.

Probing the darkest recesses of love and friendship, Lord will discover things too disturbing to ignore--that Sam wasn't the only one in Lake City with a motive for killing Marcie, that small-town secrets can hide devastating betrayals, and that the past has a way of repeating itself . . . even in murder.
From the Paperback edition.

About this title

Review:

In each successive novel since Degree of Guilt, Richard North Patterson has experimented with flashbacks and past tragedies to drive the present suspense of his legal thrillers. Silent Witness is, perhaps, his greatest achievement with the technique as his hero, Tony Lord, is haunted by the 27-year-old murder of his high school girlfriend, Alison Taylor.

In the late 1960s, Tony is the star of the Lake City, Ohio, high school football team. But when Alison is found strangled behind her house, even Tony's closest friend, Sam Robb, suspects him. Alison's true killer is never found, and Tony flees his home town to forge a career as a high-powered, high-profile San Francisco criminal attorney and marries a a movie star. Cutting to the present day, Tony is called back to Lake City to defend his old friend. Sixteen-year-old track star Marcie Calder was found dead on the shore of Lake Erie, and Sam, now the overweight assistant principal and track coach of Lake City High, is the accused. A series of scandals slowly erodes Tony's confidence in Sam's innocence as Tony comes to terms with his own troubled past.

As with Patterson's previous work, Silent Witness is a novel with subtle characters who happen to be involved in a compelling (and authentic-seeming) criminal trial. For dedicated Patterson fans, some insight into the life of actress Stacey Tarrant is a special treat. She's Tony's wife in the present world of the novel but was the lover of Senator James Kilcannon before the senator was assassinated. James was the brother of Kerry Kilcannon, the enigmatic presidential candidate at the center of Patterson's 1998 blockbuster, No Safe Place. --Patrick O'Kelley

From the Back Cover:

"This generation's best writer of legal thrillers . . . His strongest fiction to date."
--Entertainment Weekly

"Enthralling . . . The denouement is powerful."
--Los Angeles Times Book Review

"Intense courtroom drama . . . As startling as the bang of a gavel."
--People

A Main Selection of The Literary Guild

About this edition

• Publisher: Knopf
• Publication date: 1996
• ISBN 10: 0679450408
• ISBN 13: 9780679450405
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 493