It’s two in the morning when Hannah Sheraton slips into Archer’s Hermosa Beach apartment to see if Josie Bates sleeps in his bed. But Josie isn’t there. In fact, Josie isn’t anywhere. When her Jeep is found abandoned in a parking lot near the Redondo pier, the only clue to her whereabouts leads Archer to Daniel Young, an expert witness for the prosecution in the case that made Josie’s reputation … reputation as a defense attorney ten years earlier. Fighting to keep Hannah from being taken into custody by child protective services, racing against a clock ticking off the minutes of Josie’s life, Archer reluctantly partners with Daniel Young and a rogue Hermosa Beach detective, Liz Driscoll, to race down a winding road of intrigue. From the Hollywood Hills to the glitzy evangelical enclave of Orange County; the seedy side of Los Angeles to the pristine and remote California mountains, Archer bores into the past. What he finds is that the woman he loves was once a ruthless and hated defense attorney, that the system he believes in has released a double murderer, and that there is more than one person who would be happy if Josie Bates was never seen again.
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I’m becoming addicted to thrillers and there is no one better that can craft a story that will keep you on the edge of your seat, keep you awake at night because you just have to read one more chapter and who will keep you thinking “I’ve got to read every book this author has ever written.” That’s how I felt when I read Ms. Forster’s latest legal thriller, EXPERT WITNESS.
Once again we are privy to Josie Bate’s life–before when she was a ruthless defense attorney–and now when she uses her talent and compassion to help a sixteen-year-old abused girl, Hannah Sheraton. Hannah is now Josie’s ward, but something is wrong. The usual predictable Josie has seemingly disappeared into thin air. Hannah rustles up all her courage to go and see Archer, a private investigator and Josie’s sometime boyfriend, to ask for his help in locating Josie. Archer uses all his connections including a Hermosa Beach detective, Liz Driscoll, to try and uncover any clues as to Josie’s whereabouts. The news is not good. It seems that a double-murderer has been unexpectantly released from prison early and all signs point to him kidnapping Josie. When a second woman is kidnapped, the investigation turns frantic. The killer has a timetable – he kills his victims on the fifth day of captivity. Daniel Young, the expert psychiatrist, from the killer’s trial, thinks he can help. He understands how the killer thinks and Archer and Liz have no choice but to include him in their investigation. If he can find the killer, then his obnoxious self-righteous behavior will have to be endured.
Ms. Forster takes you on a journey filled with twists and turns, many of which you will never see coming. I thought I had figured out who was responsible, but I couldn’t have been further from the truth. That’s superb craftsmanship from this author. Through expert writing I felt Hannah’s anxiety, Archer’s frustration and Daniel’s smug attitude as he lends his expert opinion on the next steps in the investigation. If you enjoy thrillers, you’ll find none better than “The Witness Series” by Rebecca Forster. Highly Recommended.
Just when you think things can’t get any worse before Josie is able to speak at the state custody hiring, everything pummels to the ground. Josie is not answering her phone and the time is cutting close. Hannah knows that something is wrong, something horribly wrong and she turns to Archer to help her figure it out and find Josie. Is this someone new out to cause harm to the beloved attorney or this someone coming back from her past in revenge?
I liked this entry in the series more than the first three. It had me on edge from almost the first page.
Forster did a masterful job of giving readers two possible suspects in Josie’s disappearance and keeping both equally viable throughout most of the book. I was fairly sure I knew the real guilty party a little over halfway through, but Forster had me thinking I might be wrong until much later in the story.
She also did a great job balancing scenes in Josie’s POV with those of Archer and some other primary characters. Too many authors give us too much or too little in the victim’s POV.
There’s a bit more ‘in your face’ violence in this book than I recall being in the earlier ones. One character I suspected would play a bigger role in the mystery sort of vanished toward the end of the story. And one important sub-plot was resolved by telling the reader it had been resolved but not how it had been.
The next book in this series is on my ‘To Read’ list.