False Witness

False Witness is the fourth stand-alone novel by best-selling American author, Karin Slaughter. Leigh Collier has only worked for mega legal firm, Bradley, Canfield and Marks since COVID shut down her sole practice a year ago, so she's surprised to get a call from partner Cole Bradley. Apparently, the client, Andrew Trevor Tenant is the scion of luxury car dealership chain, Tenant Automotive Group, and has insisted she represent him.

Andrew has been charged with a particularly violent rape and aggravated assault, has dismissed his lawyer two days earlier, and his trial starts in just over a week. Even as she is introduced, in the opulent partners' conference room, to Andrew, his fiancée and his mother, Leigh is puzzled by their request.

It's the smirk that she recognises from some twenty-three years earlier, and her unease quickly turns to dread as Andrew later hints at impossible knowledge of a crime committed by two teenaged sisters. The details of his own alleged crime, and possible earlier ones, unsettle her deeply. What does he know, and what does he want?

Callie and Harleigh emerged from a dysfunctional childhood and adolescence, Callie's cheerleading injuries producing a junkie, Harleigh's hard work and determination yielding a lawyer. Neither would claim to be a saint, both have spent time in juvie, but if Andrew knows about this incident from their past, then exposure will demolish the lives they are living now.

Faced with the dilemma that pits justice, her reputation as a lawyer, and her job against the safety and sanity of her husband, her sixteen-year-old daughter and her sister, can Leigh do her job, act within the law in defending this psychopath and still somehow remove his power to harm? Or does she submit to his control? And for how long?

Her sister Callie, a graduate with honours of the school of hard knocks, plays by a very different rulebook, and the implied threat to her niece has made her very angry indeed. To what lengths will she go to neutralise the menace he poses?

What a talented author is Karin Slaughter! She manages to take some very gritty subjects (the poor management of drug addiction, the grooming of children by paedophiles, discrimination in sexual assault cases, to name a few) and build a story that addresses these convincingly, if quite graphically. The narrative is filled with tension, relieved occasionally by traces of black humour, and a dash of romance. There are red herrings and twists, some of which will have the reader gasping.

Slaughter is skilled at creating both characters to care for (and get choked up about in certain emotional moments) and characters to thoroughly despise (several of those are offered here), and has the reader cheering on these two strong women, for all their very human flaws, as they face a test of wits and guts. Two men who provide solid support also deserve admiration.

Slaughter does not shy away from the existence of the COVID pandemic, does not set her novel in an alternative present that knows no virus, but rather, realistically includes it in her story with the mention of Zoom, masks, distancing, hand sanitising, and with protagonists who are survivors of it, giving her novel authenticity without overwhelming it. A brilliant read, as always.