False Accusations
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- £8.99
Publisher Description
A surgeon charged with double homicide is out to clear his name in this debut thriller from the USA Today–bestselling author of the Karen Veil series.
Dr. Phillip Madison has everything: wealth, power, and an impeccable reputation. But in the pre-dawn hours of a quiet California suburb, the revered orthopedic surgeon is charged with double homicide—a cold-blooded hit-and-run that has left an innocent young couple dead. Blood evidence has brought the police to his door. An eyewitness has placed him at the crime scene . . . and Madison has no alibi. With his family torn apart, his career forever damaged, no way to prove his innocence, and facing life in prison, Madison hires an investigator to find the person who has engineered the case against him.
As his privileged world is brought crashing down by a psychotic seductress, as family and friends abandon him, Madison's only hope for vindication rests in revealing a truth at the heart of a lie. It is a disclosure that could cost him more than he ever imagined.
False Accusations is a psychological thriller that instantly became a national bestseller and launched Alan Jacobson's career, a novel that spurred CNN to call him "one of the brightest stars in the publishing industry."
"Alan Jacobson has crafted a riveting story with a truly frightening villainess. This is a terrific book!" —John Saul, New York Times–bestselling author
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
An apparent hit-and-run accident involving a car he owns results in a charge of vehicular manslaughter against an orthopedic surgeon in this laborious debut by California medical evaluator Jacobson. Two people die in what turns out to be a deliberate killing in a minority neighborhood in Sacramento, and Philip Madison's Mercedes is sighted as the vehicle, although he claims he was home in bed asleep, an alibi he can't prove. After he is arrested, Madison's attorney hires PI Ryan Chandler, an ace forensic investigator who will turn out to be the white knight of this narrative. Madison is already in trouble up to his neck: a beautiful but unstable volunteer worker for a mental health organization that Madison serves as president has suddenly and illogically accused him of rape. In the fallout from Brittany Harding's accusation, Madison's wife leaves him, taking the kids. It becomes clear quickly, as Brittany's emotional problems are drawn in large and stereotypically shrill outline, that she is the real killer. With all tension thus removed from the story, the author trots out some recent technological gains in forensics--saliva from the rim of a beer can for DNA sampling, retrieving and comparing Brittany's lip prints from a cigarette. There is far too much information about the novel's myriad cast of minor characters; numerous subplots add little to the main story; and a smattering of pharmaceutical and medical jargon essentially extends the slim material but does not enliven it. Moreover, Brittany's vindictive behavior is never explained; she merely acts out of female delusional fantasies. The trial is flat and predictably melodramatic. Jacobson's prose can best be described as wooden and graceless. This clunky attempt proves that forensic knowledge does not a writer make. Foreign rights sold to Denmark, Great Britain, Holland, Germany, Norway and Sweden; author tour.
