Marilyn's Mystery Reads

Book Author: Phillip Margolin

As False Witness opens, attorney Karen Wyatt is being released from the Coffee Creek Correctional Facility, Oregon’s prison for women.  She had been imprisoned for a year on false charges after exposing corruption in the Portland Police Department and the District Attorney’s office; she also was disbarred after that conviction.  Now she has been cleared of all charges and reinstated to the bar, as well as receiving a multi-million-dollar settlement.

When the story picks up three years later, we meet Congressman Thomas Horan.  He has completed a successful interrogation of a witness claiming that UFOs are flying over the United States.  She can offer no photographic proof of her assertions; it’s obvious that Horan doesn’t believe a word she’s saying.  He flies home to Oregon from Washington later that day, looking forward to relaxing and spending time with his wife, but immediately after dinner he receives a phone call and bolts out of their house without a word of explanation.

Three days later Horan is found on a trail in Silver Falls State Park.  When he’s brought to a Portland hospital, he’s questioned by the police and narrates a remarkable story.  He reluctantly tells the two detectives that “it was aliens” who kidnapped him, but he can’t remember who had called him or how he got to the state park and doesn’t want anyone investigating.  The police are stymied and decide not to take any action.  As one detective put it, “He disappeared.  Then he reappeared.  I’d say our job is done.”

The second section of the novel starts with a man named Jack Blackburn driving a 2019 Jaguar XJR 575, a car with a sticker price of just over $300,000.  When he’s stopped by the police he says that his friend Billy, the chauffeur for the ultra-wealthy Terrance Cogan, told him he could drive the car for a while and then return it to Cogan.  Blackburn says he doesn’t know where the owner lives although, as the officer who stopped him notes, the address is on the car’s registration papers in the glove compartment.

The officers put Jack in the back of their patrol car, but he’s not worried.  He’s sure that as soon as they contact Billy or Cogan. they’ll vouch for him.  But when the police go to the Cogan estate,  they find its owner lying in a pool of blood in the home’s massive living room.  When they return to their car, the next thing Jack hears is, “Mr. Blackburn, I am placing you under arrest for the murder of Terrance Cogan.”  And Karen becomes his lawyer through a program run by the Oregon Public Defense Commission, which provides legal services for those charged with criminal offenses but who are unable to pay for an attorney.

Phillip Margolin has written an outstanding novel that combines excellently written characters, a compelling plot, and a deep look into services provided for the poor in Oregon.  And I never saw the twist at the end coming!

You can read more about the author at this website.

Check out the complete Marilyn’s Mystery Reads at her website.  In addition to book review posts, there are sections featuring Golden Oldies, Past Masters and Mistresses, and an About Marilyn column that features her opinions about everything to do with mystery novels.

I’m fairly certain that Robin Lockwood, the heroine of Phillip Margolin’s latest novel, is the mystery world’s only former MMA contender.  

Now a well-respected criminal defense attorney in Portland, Oregon, Robin put herself through college as a mixed martial arts fighter with a future plan to become an attorney.  She is successful until she fights Mandy Kerrigan, a higher ranked fighter, and was soundly defeated.  At that point she put all her efforts into getting into law school.  Now Mandy has come back into Robin’s life, this time as the suspect in a murder case. 

The Finch family, consisting of a mother, father, and two teenaged children, are shot to death.  They are found by the daughter’s English teacher, Arthur Proctor, who tells the police he came to talk to the family about a potential scholarship for their daughter and ran outside when he saw the carnage and called 911.

Several minutes before Proctor enters the Finch home, a neighbor sees a woman yelling and pounding on their front door.  When no one responds the woman walks away, and now the neighbor identifies her from a photo the police show her as Kerrigan.  The neighbor says she then saw Proctor, the teacher whom she knows from her son’s school, approach the Finches’ front door.  He enters the house, only to run out a few minutes later with his cell phone pressed to his ear.

Despite the typical suburban image that the Finches project, there are serious cracks below the surface.  Margaret Finch is a criminal defense attorney known to represent members of a Russian mob, the father is a chemist with a serious gambling problem, the son Ryan pushes drugs, and the teenaged daughter is carrying a harrowing secret.

To take part in a MMA match that she hopes will revitalize her career, Mandy buys a performance-enhancing drug from Ryan that he swears cannot be detected under testing.  But he is wrong, it is detected, and as a result her purse money is being held up and she’s in danger of being suspended from the league.  The connection between Mandy Kerrigan and Ryan is what makes the police believe she is the killer.

Although Kerrigan denies that she was ever inside the Finch house and there are no physical traces there to implicate her, the police feel they have sufficient circumstantial evidence to bring her to trial.

Mandy calls Robin from jail and asks her to represent her.  She swears she’s innocent, and Robin agrees to take the case.  To make this even more interesting, the prosecutor will be Tom McGee, the first man Robin has dated seriously since the death of her fiancé several years earlier.

Phillip Margolin is a New York Times best-selling author of more than two dozen books, seven featuring Robin Lockwood.  The author has created a protagonist who is believable, a skilled professional, and a warm and caring individual.

You can read more about Phillip Margolin at this website.

Check out the complete Marilyn’s Mystery Reads at her website.  In addition to book review posts, there are sections featuring Golden Oldies, Past Masters and Mistresses, and an About Marilyn column that features her opinions about everything to do with mystery novels.