Published by Minotaur Books on November 11, 2025
Karen Wyatt was a respected criminal defense lawyer until she was convicted of a drug crime and sentenced to prison. Although the drugs were planted, a dealer testified that he sold them to Wyatt and a crime lab technician falsified a report that claimed her fingerprints were on the drugs.
Wyatt was set up in retaliation for proving that a biker charged with assaulting a cop during a raid on the biker gang clubhouse was actually the victim of the cop’s assault. A video showed that the cops who set up the raid were stealing drugs and cash from the bikers. The cops were also taking payoffs from a rival gang. They were more than a bit irked that Wyatt exposed their illegal actions.
The crooked crime lab tech is caught stealing cocaine and makes a deal that requires him to tell the truth about Wyatt. That fortuitous circumstance leads to Wyatt’s release from prison. Most of that backstory is told in flashbacks.
Having settled a civil rights claim for wrongful imprisonment, Wyatt has become a wealthy lawyer who can pick and choose her cases. She knows that a prosecutor in the DA’s office was in on the scheme that sent her to prison but she doesn’t know that person’s identity. People who might know the whole story, including the the cop who coerced the crime lab technician and the drug dealer who testified against Wyatt, are soon murdered. Wyatt’s attempt to find the truth about the scheme to send her to prison drives the plot.
A wealthy guy named Terrance Corgen is another murder victim. His body is discovered after someone reports his Jaguar missing. Police pull over Jack Blackburn while he’s driving the car. Blackburn claims Corgen’s chauffeur, Billy Kramer, met him in a bar and asked him to drive his girlfriend home in the Jaguar. Blackburn swears he never went inside the residence but the police found a glass with his fingerprints in the room where they found Corgen’s body. Blackburn seems to be on a path to a murder conviction. The story threads weave together when Wyatt agrees to represent Blackburn.
Two Portland homicide detectives, Chad Remington and Audrey Packer, investigate Corgen’s death. Another suspect is Thomas Horan, a Congressman who believes he was abducted by space aliens after expressing skepticism about alien visitors during UFO hearings. There is evidence that Horan may have been in Corgen’s home and his only alibi witnesses are space aliens. They won’t be coming to court.
Phillip Margolin ties these disparate storylines together in a way that is entertaining if implausible. The explanation for the alien abduction tested my willingness to accept unlikely plot developments. I also found it hard to believe that the sadistic leader of a motorcycle gang is also a Mensa member, but I suppose bright people can be sadistic. Motorcycle gang members are easy targets, but corruption within a legal system that depends on honest cops and prosecutors adds a bit of depth to the story.
The corrupt prosecutor’s identity requires Wyatt to discern the meaning of “Starlight,” the word uttered in a dying breath by another murder victim. Why did the dying man utter the word “Starlight” rather than simply naming the prosecutor? Because the novel wouldn’t have gone on for another fifty pages if he’d given a straightforward answer. When writers substitute “for the sake of the plot” in place of realistic actions, the story suffers. Even with that plot device, the corrupt DA’s identity is easy enough to guess.
Setting aside my reservations about plot elements that come across as forced, I appreciated the trial scenes and the effort Margolin made to give Wyatt a personality. False Witness isn’t among the best legal thrillers of recent vintage, but it is far from the worst.
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