From Amazon.com
Both a legal thriller and a Hollywood novel,
Star Witness recounts a sensational murder and trial at the very pinnacle of the movie business. It's also a meditation on the magic--and the deceptive power--of the movies. Mary Margaret Flanders, the most charismatic star in Hollywood, is found nude with her throat cut, floating in the swimming pool of her palatial mansion. The chief suspect is her husband, the brilliant director Stanley Roth. Enter Joseph Antonelli, one of the nation's top criminal-defense lawyers (and the star of four previous D.W. Buffa tales), who is soon grappling with vicious Hollywood politics, a huge media circus, and a client so complex and unpredictable that even his own lawyer doubts his innocence.
Buffa's courtroom scenes are full of authentic details that reflect his years as a defense lawyer, though they crackle a little less than in his other books. And some readers will surely bog down in his distinctive prose style, with its curious, archaic formality ("She was about to tell me something more about the difficulties with which Stanley Roth had to deal"). Nonetheless, this ambitious book offers many pleasures as it plays with our obsessions with celebrities and the movies. Its solution will keep you guessing right up to the last page, and perhaps even beyond. --Nicholas H. Allison
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
From Publishers Weekly
This uneven fifth novel in the Joseph Antonelli series (The Legacy, etc) has the colorful trial lawyer defending a legendary Hollywood director and studio mogul accused of murdering his movie star wife. Mary Margaret Flanders is killed just before filming the final scenes of a major new movie with her husband's studio. Stanley Roth, her husband, is known for his volatile temper, and becomes the leading suspect. Antonelli takes the case, and though he is sure that his client is innocent, he can't pin down the real killer. The list of suspects includes Roth's partner, who wants to take control of the studio; Flanders's college professor ex-hubby (father of the star's only child); and a blackmailing wannabe screenwriter cop, who had once been to the couple's house to look into Flanders's domestic violence complaint. Central to all this is Roth's obsessive conviction that the entire crime is a replay of his own masterpiece screenplay, Blue Zephyr, which he has yet to make into a movie. While the plot is solid, the first half of the thriller is considerably slowed by windy, repetitious description and exposition ("That's what she was: a young woman in love, but not with a man-with a camera: any camera, not just a motion picture camera.... That's what she lived for: to be on camera, to be on film..."). The pace does pick up when the action shifts to the courtroom, but this effort isn't up to Buffa's best.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
