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Review by Alice Cary
A creative writing professor once advised me to avoid flashbacks at all costs -- they don't grab a reader's attention, he said. My professor hadn't read Richard North Patterson's latest thriller, Silent Witness, which starts off with a 150-page flashback you won't be able to put down. I started reading at eleven p.m. and didn't stop until two a.m., when I reluctantly turned off my light. I've read several of Patterson's books, all of which have left me bleary-eyed, yet riveted.
The extended flashback in Silent Witness recounts the tragic senior year of the book's hero: Tony Lord -- a school leader, scholar, and football star. After winning the final game of the year, he and his girlfriend, Alison Taylor, celebrate by making love for the first time. Once Alison's curfew hour arrives, she agrees to sneak out to meet Tony again after her parents think she's safe, sound, and asleep. But Alison never shows up, and when Tony goes looking, he finds her murdered in her yard. Alison's father arrives on the scene at the same moment, accusing Tony as the prime suspect.
The entire town turns against the young man, even his best friend, Sam Robb. Tony manages to survive, and is so grateful to the lawyer who defends him, Saul Ravin, that Tony matriculates to Harvard and eventually becomes a hugely successful defense attorney. Fast forward to the present, when Tony is at the peak of his career and married to a movie star. He's hoping to take a break from an overload of trial work when an emergency call arrives from Sue Robb, Sam's wife. Sam, now the assistant principal and girls' track coach of their alma mater, is suspected in the death of a track star named Marcie Calder, found dead in a park.
Sam comes forward as the last known person to have seen her alive; he eventually admits to being involved in an affair with the student and having had sex with her on the night of her death. Tony feels an obligation to defend Sam, but returning to his hometown awakens old wounds. What's worse, Tony can't shake his doubts about the innocence of his old buddy, who keeps changing his story. Tony's mentor, Ravin, is now an aging, sometimes boozing attorney who agrees to be Tony's assistant in Sam's trial.
Perhaps the plot sounds too coincidental, but the reading is always compelling, and the story tackles provoking issues relating to guilt, innocence, suspicion, friendship, jealousy, and -- yes! -- the sometimes murky ethics of defense attorneys.
Like lawyers-turned-writers Scott Turow and John Grisham, with whom the author is often compared, Patterson knows how to write tension-filled, authentic courtroom scenes that never bog down in the minutiae of real-life litigation. One of Patterson's additional talents is his ability to keep readers on edge to the very last page. When I think about the ending carefully, it seems wildly improbable, but within the story's tangled web, the conclusion is a perfect fit.
Tony Lord always manages to score the final touchdown, whether on the football field or in the courtroom. Meanwhile, Richard North Patterson has got another winner on his hands.
Alice Cary is a freelance writer in Groton, Massachusetts.
©1996, ProMotion, inc.