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Narrated by T.J. Edwards
Richard North PattersonUnabridged — 17 hours, 57 minutes
Narrated by T.J. Edwards
Richard North PattersonUnabridged — 17 hours, 57 minutes
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Lawyer Tony Lord returns to his childhood town, but it's not a pleasant homecoming in the least. He's back because his boyhood friend, now a schoolteacher, is accused of murdering a pregnant student. Lord must not only face a heated courtroom struggle and an enraged community but also his traumatic past: He himself was suspected of murdering his girlfriend in a case that to this day remains unsolved.
Like its predecessors, Patterson's latest novel (after The Final Judgment) evinces endless admiration for the ornateness of the law, and is crowded with complex characters whose troubles will draw readers deeply into their story. This hypnotic tale revolves around a friendship that begins on a high-school football field and is tested half a lifetime later in a Lake City, Ohio, courtroom. Tony Lord, a noted California criminal lawyer, returns to the home of his youth to defend his oldest friend, Sam Robb, against the charge of murdering his 16-year-old mistress. Lord takes the sordid case in part because his own life was nearly shattered when, as a teenager, he was suspected of murdering his own girlfriend. Because he wasn't formally charged, he was never "acquitted" by his neighbors of the brutal killing, which remains unsolved 28 years later. Lord isn't ready for the feelings that assault him in Lake City, or for the resurrection of memories both cherished and hated-like those of his brief affair with the cheerleader who became Sam Robb's wife, or of Sam's past questioning of Lord's innocence. Moving back and forth in time with metronomic patience, Patterson grants these two homicide cases an almost epic grandeur. He examines, in sometimes painful detail, the ways in which the friendships of youth can pass into personal mythology and skew adult judgment. But he is at his dramatic finest when, at last, he gives the emotions of these characters, who are connected by a lifetime of love and resentment, full reign in the courtroom. These are the scenes that his fans will anticipate most eagerly, and they are as explosive and revealing as anyone could wish. 400,000 first printing; Literary Guild main selection; simultaneous Random House Audio. (Jan.)
As usual, Patterson delivers suspense for the new year. Boyhood friends Tony and Sam are torn apart when Sam is accused of murder. Years later, lawyer Tony returns home to defend Sam against similar charges.
This generation's bst writer of legal thrillers... His strongest fiction to date.
Enthralling... The denouement is powerful. Ingeniously constructed.... If I am ever accused of murder, I'd like a lawyer like Tony Lord.... What distinguishes Richard North Patterson from other bestselling authors of legal thrillers is that you become so emotionally involved with his characters that you can't bring yourself to give his books away. i routinely pass on my Scoot Turows and John Grishams, but Patterson's last three books are lines neatly on a shelf.
Intense courtroom drama... As startling as the bang of a gavel.
A successful San Francisco lawyer returns to Lake City, Ohio, to defend a childhood friend on murder charges—and to confront the townsfolk who are convinced that the lawyer himself is a killer.
A generation ago, Anthony Lord and Sam Robb thought the defining moment of their high-school careers would be when one of them was named Athlete of the Year. But all that changed when class president Alison Taylor was raped and strangled minutes after saying good-night to Tony. Despite the efforts of the Lake City police and the hatred of everyone in town—only Sam and his girlfriend, Sue Cash, stood by him—Tony was never charged with the murder, and eventually escaped to Harvard Law, a movie-star wife, and a son who's the age Alison was when she died. Now a desperate call from Sue Robb brings Tony back to Lake City. Sam, currently the track coach at Lake City High, has been accused of murdering Marcie Calder, one of his star athletes. The evidence is as damning as you'd expect: Sam was carrying on a heated affair with Marcie, who was pregnant with his child and refused an abortion. Even more unnervingly, however, nobody seems to have left Lake City for the past 27 years except for Tony and the dead. So Tony is constantly running into figures from his tainted past—Alison's bereaved parents, the fence-straddling teacher who'd refused him a college recommendation—now recast in painful new roles that prevent Tony from trying the murder of Marcie Calder without investigating the murder of Alison Taylor.
Despite the odds against him, Tony is every bit as tenacious in the courtroom as Patterson's earlier heroes (The Final Judgment, 1995, etc.); and readers who relish legal dogfights are in for hours of expertly turned battle, even though most of them will guess the final revelation long before the gavel comes down.
Intense courtroom drama...As startling as the bang of a gavel.” —People
“This generation's best writer of legal thrillers...his strongest fiction to date.” —Entertainment Weekly
“Patterson hits the first line at a dead run....He never slows down....Everything is marvelously plotted.” —Philadelphia Inquirer
“Enthralling...the denouement is powerful.” —Los Angeles Times Book Review
“Chilling.” —The Washington Post Book World
“Hypnotic...[Patterson] is at his finest when he gives the emotions of [his] characters, who are connected by a lifetime of love and resentment, full reign in the courtroom. These are the scenes that his fans will anticipate most eagerly, and they are as explosive and revealing as anyone could wish.” —Publishers Weekly (starred review)
“An absorbing read.” —New York Daily News
| BN ID: | 2940169436327 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Penguin Random House |
| Publication date: | 01/07/1997 |
| Series: | Tony Lord Series , #2 |
| Edition description: | Unabridged |
Silent Witness: Excerpt
Two days before her seventeenth birthday, Marcie Calder killed herself; died in a fall; or was murdered.
A half hour from landing in Steelton, Anthony Lord reviewed what little he knew. From the pictures in the newspaper, Marcie appeared dark and slight and pretty. She was the oldest daughter of a family with three girls; a solid B student at Lake City High School; an observant Catholic who was a member of Tony's old parish, Saint Raphael's. The Steelton Press described her as shy; her best friend, Janice D'Abruzzi, interviewed after the funeral, said that she had not dated anyone special. The newspaper accounts of the grief counseling that followed, a chance for her fellow students to face what had happened, told Tony less about Marcie than about the feverish contagion of teenage sadness, the grim resolve of the town to cope with the inexplicable. Not since the murder of Alison Taylor, Principal Burton said, had Lake City suffered such a tragedy. The thing he most remembered about Marcie struck Tony Lord as rather sad: that she was the fastest girl on the track team and, when competing, ran with a joy and abandon that was beautiful to watch.
Four days prior to her death, in her last competition as a runner, Marcie had done poorly. Afterward, her teammates recalled, she was listless, unresponsive. On the following morning, the police had found her on the beach below Taylor Park, a ribbon of blood on her head and cheek. From the condition of the body, it was plain that she had died sometime during the night. No one knew how.
There were several theories. The drop to the beach from the cliff above was more than ninety feet; from themud on her blue jeans, and the marks on the cliff itself, it appeared that Marcie had fallen. But a rock on the beach yielded samples of Marcie's blood and hair. The man who had taken her to the park that night—the last person to admit seeing her alive—was not available for comment. Her track coach, Sam Robb, the assistant principal of Lake City High School.
For a final moment, Tony studied the newspaper photograph of Marcie Calder and, next to it, that of Alison Taylor. He could never look at Alison's picture, Tony realized, without feeling the same rush of grief and loss, as fresh as yesterday.
He put the paper in his leather briefcase and wondered how, after twenty-eight years, Sam Robb's wife would seem to him.
They did not, at first, talk about Marcie Calder.
Sue drove the Ford Taurus away from the airport toward Lake City, through housing developments and shopping malls that Tony, squinting in the sun of a bright spring morning, recalled as flat green fields. What Tony wanted most to know—how she was, what her life with Sam had been until now—were things he did not ask. But eliciting more routine facts seemed to help them both. Their two kids, Sam junior and Jennifer, were both out of college. Young Sam, never the athlete his father had hoped for, was studying for an MBA at Kansas University; Jenny taught preschool in Florida. Sue had finished her degree in library science; she worked part time at the Lake City Public Library, helping with the children's section. Sue's tone seemed almost normal; it was as though, if she kept talking, her humiliation would not surface. She did not mention Sam.
"How's the town?" Tony asked. "Still the same?"
"To look at it, except the empty lots are filled with houses now. But things have changed beneath the surface—we have drugs at high school; Protestants don't hate Catholics anymore; and about every other family is divorced or has both parents working. The kids don't have to go parking now; they can make love after school, in the privacy of their parents' home. . . ." She stopped abruptly; Tony did not have to guess at her thoughts. Softly, she added, "It's still small, Tony. At a time like this, you feel how small it is."
For a moment, the present slipped away, and Tony was back in a crowded high school gym.
"Killer, killer . . ."
"The Taylors," he asked. "Are they still alive?"
"Yes." Sue gazed fixedly at the road. "I don't know how you remember them. But to me they look like bitter old people, serving out their lives." She paused for a moment. "Katherine Taylor told my mother, only four or five years ago, that there has never been a day since Alison died that they don't remember. When I think of Marcie Calder's parents, I think of that."
Tony felt his heart go out to her. At length, he asked, "How is he, Sue?"
Her fingers seemed to tighten on the steering wheel. "Scared," she said. "You know what that's like."
Something in Tony resisted the comparison. "All I know is what it was like for me."
Sue was quiet for a moment. "He could be charged with murder," she said in flat voice. "Or, if he's lucky, all that we'll have to worry about is the end of his career as a teacher. Unless he can explain to the school board what he was doing in Taylor Park, at night, with a girl on his track team."
What had Sam told her? Tony wondered. "If he takes my advice as a lawyer," he answered, "Sam won't say anything to the school board. Not until we see what the county prosecutor does about her death."
Sue did not answer. The roads became narrow; at the edge of a field, Tony saw the first familiar landmark—the white spire of Saint Barnabas Episcopal, where Alison's funeral had been held. Then they passed a white wooden sign, not unlike the one Tony remembered: "Welcome to Lake City, Home of the Lakers. Population 15,537."
The next few miles were strange. It had been so long that, for an instant, this seemed like entering a place Tony had seen only in pictures. What hit him first was nostalgia and then remembered trauma—feelings from before and after Alison's death—followed by the sudden superstitious certainty that he should not have returned. Quietly, he said, "I never thought I'd come back here."
"I know."
They took a curve in the narrow road, past an elementary school and some wood-frame houses, and then Tony saw something that had not been there before—a large wrought-iron gate to the entrance of a development of brick ranch houses. The contractor had left just enough maple trees to justify the iron lettering above the gate: "Maple Park Estates."
In spite of himself, Tony turned. And then he felt Sue watching him.
"Remember?" she asked.
What he felt, Tony realized, was a rush of pain and sweetness, surprise at the power of memory, the immediacy of his youth. "Remember?" he said softly. "It was the sweetest thing that had ever happened to me."
Sue smiled a little. "If I'd known that, Tony, I'd have made you do it twice."
As they drove on, silent, Tony felt his unease return, the moment slip away. More than being in Lake City, this came from thinking of Sam Robb again—whoever he might have become.
Reaching the town square, Tony saw the police station. "I have a favor to ask you," he said after a time. "As a lawyer, I suppose. Before I see Sam."
"What is it?"
Tony turned to her. "Could you take me to Taylor Park?"
From the Trade Paperback edition.
