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Silent Witness |  | Author: Richard North Patterson
Publisher: Ballantine Books
Category: Book
List Price: $7.99
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Seller: Dias_Family_Books
Rating:  131 reviews
Sales Rank: 56896
Media: Mass Market Paperback
Edition: 3rd THUS
Pages: 512
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.5
Dimensions (in): 6.7 x 4.1 x 1.2
ISBN: 0345404769
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.54
EAN: 9780345404763
ASIN: 0345404769
Publication Date: August 30, 1997
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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| • | ISBN13: 9780345404763 | | • | Condition: NEW | | • | Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark. |
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Amazon.com 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
Product Description
"THIS GENERATION'S BEST WRITER OF LEGAL THRILLERS . . . HIS STRONGEST FICTION TO DATE."
--Entertainment Weekly
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.
"ENTHRALLING . . . THE DENOUEMENT IS POWERFUL."
--Los Angeles Times Book Review
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.
"INTENSE COURTROOM DRAMA . . . AS STARTLING AS THE BANG OF A GAVEL."
--People
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.
A MAIN SELECTION OF THE LITERARY GUILD
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| Customer Reviews:
Showing reviews 1-5 of 131
 travesty of legal ethics November 23, 2009
George Goldberg (Tucson, AZ United States)
I give this book 2 stars because it is very well written. The author makes one care about the characters and produces some moving scenes. However, at the heart of the book is a lapse of legal ethics so blatant, and with such catastrophic consequences, that for me it undermines the entire story.
The protagonist, Tony, is introduced at the beginning of the book as a celebrity criminal lawyer in San Francisco. He must therefore be a member of the California bar, but there is no indication that he was ever admitted in Ohio, where he grew up but left at 18 and never returned. Yet when an old friend calls from Ohio to ask for his help for her husband, who is also an old friend, he goes to Ohio to represent him. Now, I am a retired trial lawyer, and perhaps the rules have changed since I was in practice, but the law used to be that you can only represent clients in states where you have been admitted to the bar. There is an exception which can be granted by a court for a specific case - it is called admission pro hac vice (for the instant case) and must be allowed by a court. I did not see any such procedure followed here. This also raises the question whether there was a legally recognized lawyer-client relationship between Tony and Sam so that anything Sam told Tony would be privileged.
However, that is not the real problem, as it could have been solved by a simple statement that Tony had, perhaps for sentimental reasons, acquired admission to the Ohio bar. The far more serious, because insoluble, problem is that Tony has such emotional baggage with this couple - with the man, Sam, who may be accused of murder, and with his wife, Sue, who called him and with whom Tony once was very close - that his usefulness as a lawyer is fatally compromised.
And so it turns out, as when Sam refuses to take Tony's advice not to testify because he still harbors resentment against Tony for calls he made as quarterback on their high school (!) football team. Sam also wonders whether Tony had sex with Sue in those long ago days, which Tony (falsely) denies. There is simply no way a trial lawyer can give his client effective representation in such emotionally overcharged circumstances. Tony should have refused - he was ethically obliged to refuse - to represent Sam in this case. If Tony wanted to help his old friends, he could have helped them find a lawyer, even pay for the lawyer if they couldn't. But taking the case was fair to neither them nor him. As I watched the story play out to its catastrophic denouement, I felt a renewed appreciation for the rules of ethics by which lawyers are supposed to abide.
Finally, I feel that the book was falsely advertised as a legal thriller. It really isn't. It is a romance novel, mostly involving teenagers with remarkable access to cars, hard liquor, and sex, part of which takes place in a courtroom. I didn't enjoy it.
 Real page turner November 8, 2009
Barbie S
This book is OMG good! I was reading it every chance I could. Great story and well written with not too much detail to bog it down. A great read and I highly recommend it.
excellent read August 29, 2009
C. Mitchell
this book left me thinking of the characters long after the story was over. The ending to me was somewhat predictable except for one part.
Mr. Perfect is Mr. Boring October 23, 2008
makedah
0 out of 2 found this review helpful
I could only get through 150 pages of this insufferable main character. Since I only read a fraction of this 500-page book, I'm giving it the benefit of the doubt by rating it 2 stars instead of 1.
Tony Lord is absolutely perfect in every way. He's a hard-working working-class guy who is brilliant, a star athlete (in TWO sports), gorgeous, and dating the prettiest, richest girl in school, who has saved her virginity just for him. He has a rough patch (to say the least) but we already know that he ends up as a famous lawyer with a gorgeous movie-star wife. Oh, for Pete's sake!
What's more, Patterson likens Tony's persecution to that suffered by Jews (via his lawyer [!]) and blacks (via his football teammate [!]). It was all too much. I had zero sympathy for what could have been a very sympathetic character.
 Has some voids September 16, 2008
Roee Zilkha
0 out of 2 found this review helpful
I purchased the book because i really admire Richard Nourth Petterson for his book THE EXILE , though , reviewing Silent Witness has it's difficulties.
Of course , As in the former Petterson's book that i've read , toward the end I felt very intrested in whats about to happen , But im sorry to say that the book , in its complex didnt thrill me much , until the last 100 pages more or less.
The Exile is very different from this 1 , within every page I read ,I was consumed with suprise and shock so much I couldnt get my hands of the book so I must say im pretty dissapointed for this one .
to summon it in few lines
great ending chapters.
full of information about the characters and emotions but lack of suprises and didnt really thrill me as a reader.
Showing reviews 1-5 of 131
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