Star Witness
Both a legal thriller and a Hollywood novel,Star Witnessrecounts a sensational murder and trial at the very pinnacle of the movie business. It's also a meditation on the magic--and the deceptive power--of the movies. Mary Margaret Flanders, the most charismatic star in Hollywood, is found nude with her throat cut, floating in the swimming pool of her palatial mansion. The chief suspect is her husband, the brilliant director Stanley Roth. Enter Joseph Antonelli, one of the nation's top criminal-defense lawyers (and the star of four previous D.W. Buffa tales), who is soon grappling with vicious Hollywood politics, a huge media circus, and a client so complex and unpredictable that even his own lawyer doubts his innocence.Buffa's courtroom scenes are full of authentic details that reflect his years as a defense lawyer, though they crackle a little less than in his other books. And some readers will surely bog down in his distinctive prose style, with its curious, archaic formality ("She was about to tell me something more about the difficulties with which Stanley Roth had to deal"). Nonetheless, this ambitious book offers many pleasures as it plays with our obsessions with celebrities and the movies. Its solution will keep you guessing right up to the last page, and perhaps even beyond.--Nicholas H. Allison