False Witness
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4.0 • 56 Ratings
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- $25.99
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- $25.99
Publisher Description
Two sisters. One secret. Someone knows what they did ... The stunning standalone from the no.1 international bestselling author
They thought they'd got away with it ... they were wrong.
Leigh and her sister Callie are not bad people - but one night, more than two decades ago, they did something terrible. And the result was a childhood tarnished by secrets, broken by betrayal, devastated by violence.
Years later, Leigh has pushed that night from her mind and become a successful lawyer - but when she is forced to take on a new client against her will, her world begins to spiral out of control.
Because the client knows the truth about what happened twenty-three years ago. He knows what Leigh and Callie did. And unless they stop him, he's going to tear their lives apart ...
Just because you didn't see the witness ... doesn't mean he wasn't there.
Praise for False Witness:
'Heart-stopping one moment, heart-breaking the next. Slaughter at her finest' Cara Hunter, author of All the Rage
'Her heroines are believable, flawed and courageous' Oyinkan Braithwaite, author of My Sister, The Serial Killer
'Absorbing' Sunday Times
'Dizzyingly dark and breathlessly compelling ... Utterly unforgettable' B. P. Walter, author of The Dinner Guest
'Rich characters and deft plotting make this an unputdownable story that will move you to the core. This is Slaughter's best yet' Camilla Lackberg, author of the Fjallbacka series
'A twisty, searingly contemporary mystery steeped in a dark past...catches your breath and keeps you gasping and guessing until the end' Stacey Abrams, author of While Justice Sleeps
'Brilliant' Herald Sun
'[This is] what Slaughter does best; fusing the humdrum outside world with the gripping bones of a cutting-edge thriller' The Australian
Customer Reviews
Not her best work
3.5 stars
Author
American. Mega-, make that giga-, selling writer in the crime/thriller genre over the past 20 years. Several series, plus standalone titles of which this is the latest.
In brief
It’s Atlanta. Spring 2021. Masks and social distancing are all around, at least among well-off Blue voters. Leigh came up hard scrabble but made it through law school and established a successful criminal defence practice. She is happily divorced from a union lawyer with whom she remains on good terms, and devoted to her teenage daughter, who is difficult to get on with as teenage girls are won’t to be. When Covid struck, jury trials stopped being a thing, and our gal’s business folded, so she joined a large white shoe firm as a junior associate (their oldest) to keep the metaphoric wolf from the door. She receives a call one Sunday evening, while attending her daughter’s high school musical, from the boss of her firm, whom she’s never met. A new client has asked for her specifically and wants to see her now. An old friend and fellow female defence attorney messages that she has just been sacked by the scion (not a word you see every day, a point which Ms Slaughter makes) of a prosperous local car firm, who is charged with aggravated rape, among other things, and suspected of other crimes. Turns out the aforementioned scion has a different name than he did when our gal and her younger sister baby sat him back in the day, because his Mom married up after dodgy real Dad disappeared. Anything more about the plot would be a spoiler.
Writing
Ms Slaughter proves, once again, that she knows how to tell a pacy, twisty story. This book also illustrates the seamless way in which accomplished crime genre fiction writers incorporate current events into their stories to keep them contemporary. That having been said, I found this highly derivative (of The Lincoln Lawyer by Michael Connelly and A Man in Full by Tom Wolfe among others), which probably reflects as much on me for reading too much escapist fiction, as it does on the author.
Bottom line
Not Ms Slaughter’s best work, which still means it’s a cut above much of what is published in this genre.
As always, fantastic
Always love her realistic representation of a woman’s thought and experience
Her work is alway so refreshing
My favourite author by far