False Testimony

Charles Kendrick, the senior United States Senator from Massachusetts, has been named a "person of interest" in connection with the disappearance of his twenty-five-year-old spokesperson, Michelle Forrester. Attorney Marty Nickerson is representing Kendrick, a high-profile resident of Cape Cod, but soon finds that parts of his story don't check out. Meanwhile, Marty and her law partner -- and lover -- Harry Madigan, are defending ex-con Derrick Holliston, who stands accused of murdering a popular local priest on Christmas Eve. He admits the killing, but claims, improbably, that he acted in self-defense.

Michelle Forrester's body is found the day Derrick Holliston's trial begins, which leaves Marty and Harry facing two mounting legal battles and two clients whose stories don't make sense. Together they must confront the law in all its maddening complexity, battling for -- or maybe against? -- their own cagey clients in order to see that justice is ultimately served.

Publishers Weekly

Connors's latest trip to the courtroom (after Maximum Security) follows busy, resilient Cape Cod attorney Marty Nickerson and her partner in love and law Harry Madigan as they handle two cases in which their clients' stories are highly suspicious. Marty is representing U.S. Sen. from the state of Massachusetts Charles Kendrick, whose attractive, talented 25-year-old staffer Michelle Forrester mysteriously disappears. Harry Madigan, meanwhile, is appointed public defender for recently released young con Derrick Holliston, who pleads self-defense in the brutal Christmas Eve murder of Fr. Francis Patrick McMahon, claiming the priest made untoward sexual advances. Both cases explode: Kendrick, who had a heated love affair with Michelle, admits that he was with her the night before she vanished, and Holliston commits "tactical suicide" with a short-lived decision to represent himself in court. A mad scramble ensues to assemble witnesses for the Kendrick case just as Michelle's body washes up in picturesque Pleasant Bay, an implicating quarter mile from the senator's estate. Connors smartly keeps her sleuthing tight and her courtroom acrobatics succinct for another excellent, fast-moving courtroom drama headed by a plucky, energetic heroine. Agent, Nancy Yost. (July) Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.

Rose Connors, whose debut novel, Absolute Certainty, won the Mary Higgins Clark Award, grew up in Philadelphia and received her law degree from Duke in 1984. A trial attorney for eighteen years, she's had experience from the prosecutorial and defense sides of the courtroom, and has exasperated any number of judges in both capacities. She is admitted to practice in both Washington State and Massachusetts and lives with her family on Cape Cod, where she is at work on the next Marty Nickerson novel.