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Suspicious
minds
It must be in the genes. Simon Tolkien, the grandson of the author of The Lord of the Rings, makes his fiction debut with a brilliant legal thriller that proves he inherited more from J.R.R.Tolkien than a surname.
Final Witness (Random House, $24.95, 283 pages) is a haunting story of a lonely 14-year-old English boy who witnesses his mother's murder and fights to get her killer convicted.
Thomas Robinson, son of Britain's defense minister, is alone with his mother in their ancestral home on the Suffolk coast, when two men break into the house. The frail, loving Lady Anne hides her son before she is gunned down.
Overhearing the killers, Thomas is convinced they were hired by his father's glamorous personal assistant, Greta Grahame. When the boy accuses Greta of plotting to kill his mother, his father disowns him and marries the woman.
In one of the most compelling and charged courtroom scenes, Greta's defense lawyer seeks to prove that Thomas has framed his stepmother. It is left to Thomas and a schoolfriend to seek the truth. As Thomas searches for evidence against Greta, he also has to confront his own feelings about his sensual stepmother, who tried to win the teenager's friendship.
Tolkien, a barrister, captures the loneliness of an imaginative, sensitive child. The suspenseful Final Witness is exquisitely crafted, with rare insights into the dark side of human nature.
It must be in the genes. Simon Tolkien, the grandson of the author of The Lord of the Rings, makes his fiction debut with a brilliant legal thriller that proves he inherited more from J.R.R.Tolkien than a surname.
Final Witness (Random House, $24.95, 283 pages) is a haunting story of a lonely 14-year-old English boy who witnesses his mother's murder and fights to get her killer convicted.
Thomas Robinson, son of Britain's defense minister, is alone with his mother in their ancestral home on the Suffolk coast, when two men break into the house. The frail, loving Lady Anne hides her son before she is gunned down.
Overhearing the killers, Thomas is convinced they were hired by his father's glamorous personal assistant, Greta Grahame. When the boy accuses Greta of plotting to kill his mother, his father disowns him and marries the woman.
In one of the most compelling and charged courtroom scenes, Greta's defense lawyer seeks to prove that Thomas has framed his stepmother. It is left to Thomas and a schoolfriend to seek the truth. As Thomas searches for evidence against Greta, he also has to confront his own feelings about his sensual stepmother, who tried to win the teenager's friendship.
Tolkien, a barrister, captures the loneliness of an imaginative, sensitive child. The suspenseful Final Witness is exquisitely crafted, with rare insights into the dark side of human nature.