Long time customer and newly minted mystery writer, Gordon Campbell has taken the publishing world by storm with his courtroom procedural, Missing Witness.
ISBN-13: 9780061337512 Availability: On Our Shelves Now Published: William Morrow, 10/01/2007
All booksellers live in fear of the day when a valued customer comes in bearing a manuscript. We harbor that fear because we know how hard books are to write, how much goes into them--and how seldom they are actually good, or even readable. When Gordon Campbell brought in what appeared to be several pounds of typed pages, I blanched. I promised to give them a try, though, and took them home expecting to suffer through a few pages before framing some polite reaction. Instead, I couldn't put the book down. Neither could his editor. Neither could his publisher. Missing Witness is strong (amazingly so) on plot, replete with emotion and tension; it is also peopled with characters that grow and surprise, ideas that emerge from the action, the characters, their interactions and reactions to echo in the mind of the reader long after the last page is turned. It is that rarest of books, a great read that is also a great novel--one possessed of the complexity and legal accuracy of a Scott Turow, the heart and passion of a Dennis Lehane, the soul of All the King's Men. Betsy Burton, Morrow, $24.95
