The Third Victim by Phillip Margolin

Meredith Fenner is found injured but alive on a dark stretch of road in rural Oregon with a tale of being kidnapped, tortured, and beaten.  She had escaped from a nearby cabin.  Her injuries are similar to two earlier victims in Portland who both ended up dead… their murders as yet unsolved.  Meredith recovers and leads the police to the cabin where she was held captive.  It is owned by a successful lawyer, Alex Mason.  Mason has recently married his second wife who tells the police he’s a control freak and likes his sex kinky and sometimes violent.  She says he enjoys bondage and burning her with a cigarette much the same torture used on the two dead victims as well as on Fenner. The police arrest Mason and he hires the best criminal defense lawyer he knows, Regina Barrister.

Regina is a legendary criminal defense lawyer but she has a secret that could end her career… she’s experiencing early signs of Alzheimer’s.  She frequently forgets details and occasionally forgets where she is or where she parked her car.  Her young assistant, Robin Lockwood has noticed her boss’s memory loss but is too intimidated to challenge Regina’s authority.

During the discovery phase of Alex Mason’s trial, Robin and her investigator develop a conviction that Mason is innocent but have no real physical evidence to support their theory.  Mason claims his wife initiated their kinky sexual encounters and he was an unwilling participant.  But it’s his word against hers and the jury finds him guilty.  After the trial Robin finds a witness who knew both Meredith Fenner and Mason’s wife years earlier in Florida and will testify the two women know each other.  But the trial is over.  What can Regina and Robin do at this point to save their client, their professional reputations, and their careers?

The Third Victim is in keeping with Phillip Margolin’s work from his early years as a legal thriller author.  Gone But Not Forgotten is one of a plethora of his hits from the 1990’s and early 2000’s that I enjoyed reading. The Third Victim is a return to that genre and is truly Margolin’s strength.  The ending, however, is a bit too predictable but the journey to get there is an amazing ride.

Thanks for the advance copy from Netgalley.