“A crackerjack thriller” by the #1 New York Times –bestselling author of Silent Witness : A lawyer defending a Vietnam vet is caught in a kidnapper’s web ( Publishers Weekly ). All of America is watching when a sniper’s bullet cuts down presidential hopeful James Kilcannon. As the nation rises up in outrage, one lawyer is bold enough to represent the Vietnam veteran accused of firing the fatal shot. Tony Lord has never shied away from a fight, and he will do whatever it takes to get his client a fair trial. A year later, tragedy strikes Kilcannon’s rock-star girlfriend, Stacy Tarrant. Her assistant is kidnapped by a masked terrorist known as Phoenix, who threatens to execute him on live television unless he meets Phoenix’s demands. As Tony helps Stacy through the ordeal, he discovers that Phoenix has connections to the Kilcannon slaying and intends to mount his own televised trial—in which Tony and Stacy are the defendants and Phoenix is the executioner.

Almost thirty years have passed since Tony Lord left Lake City. Thirty long years dedicated to putting the past the brutal murder of his girlfriend, Alison Taylor, and his own acquittal of the crime behind him. Married, a father, and a successful defense lawyer in San Francisco, Tony Lord has run as far from Lake City as he can. But the phone call requesting his return and the circumstances surrounding it is enough to make the ghosts of Tony's past live again. The trigger is the murder of another young woman - that of 16-year-old Lake City High School track star Marcie Calder, last seen alive with Sam Robb, her coach and Tony's childhood friend. With this stunning new novel of psychological drama and suspense, Richard North Patterson has done it again. Silent Witness is a drama of rivalry and betrayal, the darkest recesses of love and friendship, and the tenacious grip of the past on all our lives.