Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

I like a good deal. You know how when you go to the grocery store and you find your favorite cereal is buy one get one free, you almost feel like you've won some sort of lottery. Now, you know the store has upped the base price of the cereal, but you still snatch it up and through it your cart. There is a great feel to a two for one deal. That's how I have always felt about a good courtroom drama. You're getting two dramas for the price of one. The first drama is outside the courtroom. The incident, the lives affected, secrets, conspiracies and so much more pepper the events leading up to a trial. Then the trial, the legal maneuverings, the back room deals, the attorneys and judges, you can't get much better than that. Recently there has been more and more legal thrillers that forgo the courtroom. The lawyer turned detective who solves the mystery without even filing a motion. While these books are often quite entertaining, I sometimes feel like I missed something. In Hostile Witness by Rebecca Forster we get the whole enchilada. Josie Baylor-Bates is a talented yet flawed attorney. Tortured by her past and by her success as a criminal defense attorney, all Josie wants now is to settle into a small neighborhood practice taking care of wills and eveyday legal problems. Then her old college roomate Linda Sheraton shows up at her door, her daughter having just been arrested for the murder of her step-grandfather, a California Supreme Court Justice. This was exactly the kind of high profile case that Josie wanted to avoid. Josie's intentions were to meet with the girl, get her through the bail hearing then hand her off to a qualified attorney, but after meeting with Hannah she can't get the image of the beautiful yet troubled girl out of her head. Putting everything at risk, her new practice, her relationship with her boyfriend and even her life, Josie takes on the case with a passion. A passion for a girl everyone believes is guilty. Hostile Witness is more than just a legal thriller. It is a story of motherhood and abandonment, both physical and emotional. It is also the launch of a new series with an intriguing new protagonist. Like Ben Kincaid or Dismas Hardy, this is a character that you'll want to follow. Along with a strong and complicated hero, Forster creates an intriguing cast of peripheral characters. Archer, the solid as a rock boyfriend and private investigator. Rudy Klein, the honest and well intentioned prosecutor and Hannah the troubled young girl stuck in the eye of the tornado. These characters are the glue that hold this story, and most likely future entries into this series, together. Hostile Witness is an excellent start of an interesting new series. The pace was brisk and readable. The story sucks you in immediately, and the ending is full of thrills and surprises. For anyone who reads this novel, I suggest after completing it going back to reread the first couple of chapters. Doing this will show you how truly well this book was put together.