FIRST-RATE FORENSIC FICTION
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Fans of forensic fiction, don't miss this one. With his 12th novel and the third featuring Portland attorney Amanda Jaffe, former criminal defense attorney Phillip Margolin paints a suspenseful, disturbing picture of what can happen to crime scene evidence.
With a narrative episodic in nature Margolin captures readers at the outset and holds them in thrall until the final page. Defense attorney Doug Weaver isn't having a particularly good day. He has had to witness death by lethal injection of one of his clients, Raymond Hayes. Accused of killing his widowed mother, it doesn't take the jury long to exact the death penalty. Doug believes in his client's innocence, and feels he messed up the defense. Seeing Raymond put to death is more than he can handle.
This same death is a time for jubilation for crime scene investigator Bernard Cashman. Receiving a telephone call notifying him of the death and thanking him for his testimony "that nailed Hayes" made Cashman's chest swell with pride. This was, indeed, an occasion, his testimony had now put three men on death row, and he kept a scrapbook of his achievements. To celebrate he "uncorked a bottle of La Grande Dame 1979" and then prepared a blini spread with banned Caspian Sea beluga caviar.
Next, we're introduced to Vincent Ballard, a junkie, who supports his habit by spying for Portland drug lord, Martin Breach. When Ballard is found dead, Cashman is one of the first on the police protected scene. Attorney Frank Jaffe owes Breach, so he doesn't hesitate to defend one of Breach's men who is accused of the junkie's murder.
Doug Weaver's luck seems to improve when he frees Jacob Cohen, a homeless evidently delusional man, who has been charged with failing to register as a sex offender. But his good fortune soon runs out when Cohen is arrested for the brutal murder of a woman.
Margolin ties all of these threads together with the skill of a surgeon, while presenting shocking details of forensic evidence and the horrifying plotting of a deranged mind.
Another can't-put-down thriller from Margolin.
- Gail Cooke
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