Santa doesn’t want cookies this year. He would rather have you head over to the Concord Public Library and check out a book or two for yourself.
The Unbidden Truth
Kate Wilhelm
2004, 366 pages
Setting: Oregon and California
Barbara Holloway is a Eugene, Ore., attorney known for taking on difficult cases. In “The Unbidden Truth,” she is offered a large retainer to defend a young pianist, Carol Fredericks, charged with murdering the manager of the piano bar where she works. The person hiring her wishes to remain completely anonymous. Barbara wonders why.
As Barbara gets to know the defendant, she discovers the young woman cannot remember anything about her life prior to the age of 8, not even how she learned to play the piano. Here is another mystery for Barbara to solve. Is this lack of memory in any way connected to the anonymous client? As Barbara and her team dig deeper to answer these questions and figure out why Carol is being framed for this murder, the killer’s actions threaten the safety of all involved.
This is a complex story line with many twists and turns which kept me turning the pages to see what would happen next. If you like legal thrillers or Linda Fairstein’s or Sue Grafton’s characters, give Wilhelm’s Barbara Holloway a try. If you like this one, she appears in 10 other titles.
Ginny Babczak
Reference Librarian
