Key Witness [Paperback]

Wyatt Matthews, a wealthy corporate lawyer, quits his job and signs on as a public defender in this latest from Freedman, whose House of Smoke (LJ 12/95) was a best seller.
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Lawyer Wyatt Matthews has a thriving practice, a glitzy house, a sleek car, and a beautiful wife. So why does he feel unfulfilled? Not enough "real life." So he takes a leave from his lucrative law firm, signs on with the public defender, and takes on the seemingly unwinnable case of teenage drug dealer Marvin White. In jail for robbery, White tries to impress a fellow prisoner by claiming to be the serial killer responsible for the deaths of half a dozen prostitutes. But the prisoner who hears White's confession is a snitch who uses his scoop to his own advantage. Only Wyatt, with a skeleton staff and none of the resources his old firm offered, can help prove White's innocence and convict the real killer. The author of Against the Wind (1991), Freedman, a Grisham wanna-be with some talent, has concocted a tale filled with unusual twists and a megadose of suspense. But a complacent, self-satisfied hero, who has an unfortunate need to make Important Statements about Life, weakens this potentially powerful thriller considerably, as does a plethora of distracting sidebar plots. Still, it makes diverting reading and may draw enough Grisham and Turow fans to generate demand. Emily Melton --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Superior, improbable, but gripping postO.J. legal procedural that fearlessly plays well-worn race, sex, and psychokiller cards, and still wins the game. Wyatt Matthews, a middle-aged seven-figure-salaried rainmaker lawyer, is burned out from too much easy money. In an attempt to recapture the illusion of integrity that once seemed so necessary, he signs up for six months of pro bono labor in the Public Defender's Office, where he gets a stack of color-coded felony files and advice to plea-bargain as many of his charges as possible. When one of them, an incompetent holdup homeboy named Marvin White, is connected to a series of sickening rape-slasher killings, Matthews finds his crusade and decides to defend White with all the tricks of the trade. It isn't going to be easy: White is an 18-year-old semiliterate black male, and the state has what would appear to be incontrovertible lab evidence showing his guilt. Freedman (House of Smoke, 1996, etc.) piles it on a little thick with some of the villains--one has a reproduction of the Sistine Chapel's ceiling tattooed on his back, with the Devil sticking his finger out to Adam--but he invests the other familiar summer-stock players with charming eccentricities and puts them in extravagantly over-the-top settings. Despite a manipulatory plot that demands one too many contrivances to keep the suspense churning, Freedman delivers a powerfully absorbing tale of justice gone almost, but not quite, out of control. What we imagine to be a rigid, hidebound legal system is, it seems, a clash of personalities in which, every once in a while, the good guys win. An intensely accomplished, smoothly written, character-driven page-turner that, for all its flaws, manages to push the right buttons while sustaining a high level of suspense and interest. (Literary Guild/Mystery Guild selection) -- Copyright ©1997, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

A corporate attorney gives up his prestigious position for the life of a public defender and tackles a case he cannot possibly win: the defense of a young black man with a criminal record who has been accused of seven rape-murders. The defender's only chance is to discredit the testimony of the prosecution's key witness, but as the city seethes with racial tension, he realizes that the verdict is far more important than just one man's guilt or innocence. Is he willing to risk his hard-earned reputation and take the chance of losing the wife he loves for true justice to prevail.