Silent Witness
Rebecca Forster
(Reviewer - Rebecca Brown)
2005 Signet
ISBN: 0451214242

Josie's ex-cop lover is accused of the murder of his disabled stepson.

Trouble is teenage Timothy Wren, with the mental capacity of a five-year-old, died two years ago in a gruesome accident at California's oldest amusement park. The owner & his henchman ducked the litigious bullet because the mother, Lexi, died a few weeks later of pancreatic cancer.

Trouble is Archer had married Lexi at the end of his career when he'd been pulled off his beat for arresting a young punk with “excessive force”. Refusing the obligatory psychiatric testing & unable to adapt to being a desk jockey, he took early retirement. After a year of dating Josie & then breaking it off, he's still nursing a wounded heart & distorted memories of his dead wife. Now he's earning his keep taking photos of wayward wives for well-heeled, suspicious husbands. That's when a couple of DA investigators find him, &, in an arrest that is the epitome of “excessive force”, haul his derriere into the precinct.

Trouble is Josie Bates, attorney at law, who met & fell hard for Archer a year ago, & really knows little about his history, especially the fact that he even had a stepson, comes to his defense. She's having a tough time separating her professional life from her private, as well as getting Archer to talk about anything.

Trouble is Hannah, a traumatized teen who's been exonerated for her mother's murder -- no, not killing her mom -- her mom killed someone -- is now in Josie's legal care. Josie's never had kids, & is blundering her way through the unknown territory of parenthood, with the help of her memories of her upstanding dead marine father.

Trouble is Tim's mother, Lexi, & father, Colin, separated right after the doctors told them that due to lack of oxygen at birth, their son would always be damaged. Now Colin wants recompense for Tim's death, & through his lawyer, the handsome & urbane Jude Getts, has set in motion a civil suit against Pacific Park. To thwart that end the owner has accused Archer of murdering the boy by tossing him off their Shock & Drop ride, & they have security camera footage to prove it.

While Rebecca Forster's main characters are lively & rough-hewn, they are almost incoherent, & I found myself growling to have Archer & Josie say something straight-up & complete. Oh, & by the way, Archer really, really needs some therapy! Sorry, Big Guy, it isn't as bad as you think!

On the other hand, thank the stars attorneys can & do speak whole thoughts all the way through. Everyone mostly comes off as the genuine article, with all the flaws of greed, deception, arrogance, neediness, stupidity, stubbornness & faint-heartedness, along with the pathos of people learning to trust, love & make whole lives out of their fragmented hearts.

Silent Witness is a humdinger of a thriller with lots of emotional twists & legal turns. I certainly want to catch up with her first legal thriller Hostile Witness, as well as many romances.
(05/08/05)

Rebecca