Hostile Witness: A Josie Bates Thriller

I haven't read many legal thrillers in the past few years, but I think I am going to have to add more books of this genre to my future reading list - especially those written by Rebecca Forster. Hostile Witness is just a fantastic, completely absorbing read, the kind of book that makes you hate your job because having to get up early for work means having to set the novel aside in the wee hours of the morning just so you can get a few hours of sleep. Any thriller is best judged by the number of hours' sleep you miss, and Hostile Witness is right up there with the best of them. Usually, legal thrillers have a few passages that are dry and boring or feature cardboard characters lacking any spark of life in them. Not so with Hostile Witness. Forster has given life to some vivid, remarkably human characters - the heroic, sympathetic lawyer who puts a painful past behind her to defend a young girl accused of arson and murder; the 16-year-old defendant, a troubled teen lost in emotional chaos and harboring shocking secrets, the girls' seriously dysfunctional mother and step-father seemingly hiding behind mysterious secrets of their own, the hard-nosed yet somehow slightly noble prosecuting attorney, even the victim himself, a man already dead when the novel begins. The protagonist of the novel is Josie Baylor-Bates, a lawyer who finds herself back in the criminal defense game she left some years ago. Not only is she still dealing with the pain of being abandoned by her mother when she was just a young girl, she is haunted by an old case. An accused murderer she successfully defended (and truly believed to be innocent) turned around and killed again - only this time it was her own children. The sense of guilt that tragedy engendered in Josie led her to abandon criminal defense cases altogether and settle down in a quiet beach community with a quiet little legal practice. Then an old college roommate turns up at her door and begs her to defend her daughter. This will be no ordinary case; it will, in fact, explode all over the media. The girl, Hannah Sheraton, is accused of killing her step-grandfather, a man who just happened to be a prominent justice on the California Supreme Court. In the middle of everything is Hannah's step-father, the governor's choice to take his father's place on the high bench. The case has media circus written all over it - even before a series of shocking revelations about the murdered judge come to light, but Josie agrees to take the case after meeting Hannah. She sees a little bit of herself in the young girl, a frightened lass with deep emotional troubles manifested outwardly in obsessive-compulsive behavior, self-mutilation, and a powerful overdependence on her mother. Convinced of her client's innocence, Josie's defense of the girl runs into a number of obstacles, including the girl's own mother and step-father, neither of whom, Josie comes to believe, has Hannah's best interests at heart. All too so

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

One thing is immediately clear from page one of Hostile Witness: you're not going to do anything else until you finish this book.If you're a fan of legal thrillers, you've read enough to know when an author truly understands the law. Rebecca Forster not only understands how the law really works, in court and out, but she knows how to grip you with the dramatic details of it. Her main character, Josie Baylor-Bates, has tried to escape the hynoptic lure of courtroom battle, but she can't escape its powerful tug, and she takes us along on the harrowing ride.It's not easy to pinpoint the culprit in this thriller -- as soon as you reach that "Aha!" moment, the story spins in another unexpected direction.All of the characters in this book could become the star of their own novel. Fortunately we will get to see at least some of these folks again, thanks to the sneak peak of Silent Witness at the end of this book. Hopefully it won't be too long before it's available -- but if the wait seems intolerable, read this one again.

I am a big book reader. This was the first book I read from Rebecca and it wont be my last. I am looking forward to her part 2 called Silent Witness. This book had everything I look for, Mystery and murder. I receommend this book to all mystery and law books lovers.

Here is a book with real thrills, real intrigue and real characters.Starting with a great opening that catches your breath, this book follows through beyond the usual lawyer jibberish and tells an interesting story. While it may strike some as too close to Court TV type productions (its prety realistic), the detail of the writer describing the court processes remains interesting and the character always enjoyable. The ending is NOT predictable (I'm not telling) and that is always fun in books like this.I liked it a lot and would like to see more of this kind of writing. Will want to see another from this author. Haven't seen her before. She definently knows how to weave the interesting legal mystery.