Star Witness - Softcover

Buffa, Dudley W.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0451411331 ISBN 13: 9780451411334

Publisher: Onyx Books, 2004

Synopsis

When one of Hollywood's most successful writers and directors is placed on trial for his wife's murder, attorney Joseph Antonelli takes the case, which seems open-and-shut and which the defendant believes is tied to his re-make of Orson Welles's Citizen Kane. Reprint.

About this title

Review

Both a legal thriller and a Hollywood novel, Star Witness recounts 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 DW 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 be bogged 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, Amazon.com

Edition details

• Publisher: Onyx Books
• Publication date: 2004
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0451411331
• ISBN 13: 9780451411334
• Binding: Mass Market Paperback
• Number of pages: 432