Legally dead
Subtitle: a novel
By: Edna Buchanan
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Published: 2008
Place of publication: New York
Language: eng
Number of pages: 358
ISBN-13: 9780743294775
Subjects: Identification; Fiction
Description: U.S. Marshal Michael Venturi of the Witness Protection Program relocates a mobster, now a government witness, to a small rural town after creating a new identity for him. The man proves to be a monster unleashed on an unsuspecting community. The results are tragic. To make amends Venturi leaves the Marshals Service and assembles a team of close confidants to secretly create new identities for innocent men and women whose lives have been ruined through no fault of their own. And before being declared "legally dead" -- they have to die. The result is a combination of Extreme Makeover, Mission Impossible, and CSI -- the last in reverse. In these "deaths," some of them spectacular, phony forensics must be created to fit the "facts" and fool the experts.  But when one of Venturi's clients is murdered, and Venturi's own loved ones are threatened, Venturi must call upon his former training in both the U.S. Marines Force Recon and the Marshals Service, as he is hunted by police, prosecutors, ruthless killers, and his own former federal colleagues.--From publisher description.