Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    Unavailable
    Silent Witness
    Unavailable
    Silent Witness
    Unavailable
    Silent Witness
    Audiobook (abridged)3 hours

    Silent Witness

    Written by Richard North Patterson

    Narrated by Boyd Gaines

    4/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this audiobook

    Attorney Tony Lord left his hometown and the bitter memories of his girlfriend's murder behind. Now, twenty-eight years later, he's pulled back to Lake City to defend his closest high school friend against a charge of homicide.

    Sam Robb, the married father of two, is a local football legend. But he was also the last to see sixteen-year-old Marcie Calder alive, and as shocking forensic evidence at the trial reveals, he is the father of her unborn child.

    Probing the darkest recesses of love and friendship, Lord will discover things too disturbing to ignore--that Sam wasn't the only one in Lake City with a motive for killing Marcie, that small-town secrets can hide devastating betrayals, and that the past has a way of repeating itself . . . even in murder.


    From the Paperback edition.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherPenguin Random House Audio
    Release dateJul 4, 2000
    ISBN9780375418150
    Unavailable
    Silent Witness
    Author

    Richard North Patterson

    Richard North Patterson is the author of over twenty bestselling and critically acclaimed novels. Formerly a trial lawyer, he was the SEC liaison to the Watergate special prosecutor and has served on the boards of several Washington advocacy groups. He lives in Martha's Vineyard, San Francisco, and Cabo San Lucas with his wife, Dr. Nancy Clair.

    More audiobooks from Richard North Patterson

    Related to Silent Witness

    Related audiobooks

    Thrillers For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      What To Read?

      Apr 23, 2021

      William Boyd is in sparkling form in this novel set in 1968 in the seaside town of Brighton in the UK where a Swinging Sixties movie is in full production. The trio in question are Talbot Kydd, an ageing movie producer, Elfrida Wing, a successful wri

      2 min read

    • Article

      'The Pain Never Ebbs. The Tears Never Dry. But They Are Proof That My Brother, Rob, Mattered'

      Sep 10, 2018

      Last week, a California man was arrested for threatening to assassinate journalists at the Boston Globe newspaper. In a series of phone calls, the suspect lashed the Globe for its editorials critical of Donald Trump and parroted a phrase often bellow

      6 min read

    • Article

      Wrath of Khan

      May 23, 2021

      Wrath of Khan
      2 min read

    • Article

      Bernie Katz, Prince Of Soho: New Podcast Explores The Tragic Demise Of Late, Much-loved Groucho Manager

      Jun 10, 2021

      The story of Berniz Katz is an extraordinary one. It is a sad one, too. At times, it is a glamorous run of stars and life in the darkest hours after midnight – which, for a certain type, are altogether the brightest – at other points, it seems a piti

      4 min read

    • Article

      The Baby-faced Killer

      Jul 12, 2023

      The Baby-faced Killer
      3 min read

    • Article

      Blood Relations

      Jul 18, 2022

      The victim was sixty-eight-year-old society matron Idella Long Thompson, found crumpled in a pool of blood on her bathroom floor. The year: 1948. The place: Leland, Mississippi, a drowsy little Delta town girded by cotton fields and bisected by Highw

      3 min read

    • Article

      Mask Of The Rose

      Jan 10, 2023

      Mask Of The Rose
      1 min read

    • Article

      Missing Fathers: Reading Hisham Matar in Glasgow

      Sep 6, 2017

      Ten years after his disappearance my father remains missing. On the anniversary, I’ve come back to Glasgow to look for him, with Matar’s words for company. The post Missing Fathers: Reading Hisham Matar in Glasgow appeared first on The Millions.

      12 min read

    • Article

      Solving The Unsolved: How Cities Are Turning Up Heat On Cold Cases

      Feb 25, 2019

      In 1965, US detectives routinely cleared nearly 90 percent of murder cases. Today, 40 percent of homicides go unsolved, according to the FBI Uniform Crime Report.

      10 min read

    • Article

      Monday, Nov. 18

      Nov 7, 2019

      9/8c, CBS Fall’s breakout courtroom drama offers compelling cases, like tonight’s murder trial with an 11-year-old witness. But All Rise fans also love the friendship between prosecutor Mark Callan and Judge Lola Carmichael (Wilson Bethel and Simone

      2 min read

    • Article

      A Swim In Deadly Waters

      Jan 29, 2023

      A Swim In Deadly Waters
      2 min read

    • Article

      ‘The Holly’ Digs Deep Into One Man’s Complicated Efforts To End Gang Violence

      Jul 15, 2021

      “The Holly” shows how, faced with a system stacked against him, Terrance Roberts tried to stop gang violence in Denver.

      3 min read

    Reviews for Silent Witness

    4/5

    142 ratings5 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

    • 5/5
      I had never read a Richard North Patterson novel before...but am so glad that this one caught my eye. His work is outstanding. So much so that I believe he will join the ranks of my favorite mystery writers. I really enjoyed the book. The story was well told making it a "page turner" I had worked out who had probably committed the crime before the end but still was surprised by some of the evidence. Anyone that likes a good mystery along with some court room drama will really like this book.
    • 5/5
      Engrossing, surprise ending.
    • 5/5
      New characters and really good legal mystery.
    • 3/5
      I haven't read a lot of legal thrillers - Scott Turow's first and a couple of John Grishams when trapped on an airplane. But Cousin Frank brought be a bag of paperbacks to help me get through post-surgical recovery. I'd never heard of Richard North Patterson (though my wife told me he was very popular). Having just started Patterson's "The Final Judgement), Patterson seems to have a standard set-up: an accomplished attorney has to return to his/her hometown, having previously vowed never to return. But he/she has a responsibility to prove a friend/relative innocent of murder. I didn't know that when reading "Silent Witness," so I just went along with the premise. In this case, it's super-attorney Tony Lord, who returns to his Ohio hometown to defend his high school best friend, Sam Robb - vice principal of his high school - against charges of murdering a student with whom he'd been having a sexual relationship. As a high school student, Tony had been accused of murdering his girlfriend, Alison Taylor, after having sex with her following the big football game which Tony, the quarterback, and Sam, the receiver won for their school. Tony is conflicted by his high school experience, his relationship with Sam, his relationship with Sam's wife, Sue, and his doubts about Sam's innocence. He is, however, a dedicated and determined criminal defense attorney, who will use any means at his disposal, including casting reasonable doubt by pointing a finger at another high school friend who knew the dead girl, Marcie Calder. While all of the lawyering keeps a level of suspense about Marcie's murder, it doesn't take Sherlock Holmes - or even Tony Lord - to figure out who murdered Marcie Calder and who murdered Alison Taylor. Patterson betrays the mystery through his characters' dialog - there's just too much yammering between and among the principal characters about Alison's murder, the night she died, the police investigation of Tony, the police investigation of Sam, how sorry everyone is about the murders and the accusations. Tony and Sam really are not very interesting characters, and Sue is just connective tissue. The most interesting characters are Stella Marz, a prosecutor with steel in her spine and a genuine outrage about crimes against women, and Saul Ravin, the aging attorney who had represented Tony in the matter of Allison Taylor and helped Tony in his defense of Sam Robb. What did I like? The high school friendship/competition between Tony and Sam was spot on in the details and genuine in its emotion. The two are both stellar athletes, but things just seem to come easier to Tony, which Sam resents. They are both candidates for the school's athlete of the year, which Sam wins but can't convince himself he was more deserving than Tony. He has a terrific girlfriend, but has convinced himself that Tony's is a better catch. When Tony comes back to defend Sam, he's conflicted between gratitude (though Sue asked Tony to defend Sam) and resentment against again falling into the shadow of the better athlete, who's now a legal legend. My wife was an attorney in another life, and I've sat on juries. As on TV and int he movies, Tony and Stella are the kind of lawyers we'd all like to have in a pinch - but which we rarely see in real life. The courtroom scenes are well done, with incisive questioning and anticipation of the opposition's questions; and dramatic, but not overly dramatic, opening and closing statements. Of course, we have the destruction of witness testimony and ingenious interpretations of evidence. The result of the trial is not surprising, but the denoument was. In the end the book really is about ethics - of police and prosecutors, educators, local politicians, victims' family members, and legal advocates.
    • 4/5
      This similar to a Law and Order: SVU episode. But I like it because you get flashbacks from Tony Lord's past that really play out into the plot. Very good suspence and a suprising ending. Nice read