Retribution by Jilliane Hoffman
I am, apparently, one of the few remaining attorneys on the face of the planet who has not written a novel. This particular novel is the first by a former Florida Assistant State Attorney.
Retribution opens in 1988 with Chloe Larson, a recent graduate of St. John's Law School, reluctantly taking a break from her studies to go to a broadway show with her boyfriend, who is a high-powered gunner at a major New York law firm. Predictably, the guy ends up being a major tool who not only shows up two hours late for the show he begged her to see, but then fails to give her the engagement ring she was expecting. Feeling jilted, she goes home--alone--not knowing that a creepy stalker wearing a clown mask lays in wait in the bushes outside her apartment. He breaks into her apartment and brutally rapes, tortures, maims, and leaves Chloe for dead. She manages to recover physically, but, understandably not mentally.
Fast forward twelve years to Miami. Chloe has changed her appearance to look more plain, and changed her name to C.J. Townsend. We learn that it took her two years to pull her life back together, after which she moved to Florida, took the Bar exam, and became a prosecutor with the State Attorney's office in Miami. A rising star, C.J. eventually becomes the Assistant Chief of the office's Major Crimes Unit. One of her major cases is one involving a serial rapist/murderer known as the "Cupid" killer. A random traffic stop results in an arrest of a man suspected to be the Cupid killer, and, during the probably cause hearing, C.J. nearly has a breakdown when, after she hears the man speak and sees a distinctive scar on his arm, she realizes that the suspect is, in fact, the man who brutally attacked her twelve years earlier. She realizes that she may have a conflict of interest going forward with the case, but nobody in her office knows of her past, and she wants to keep it that way. Also, she is afraid that if her office gets conflicted out, the case will be reassigned to a much smaller, less experienced State Attorney office elsewhere in the state. She learns that the statute of limitations has run out on her crimes in New York, so she does not have a New York prosecution to fall back on. Her only hope for justice lies in successfully prosecuting her attacker in Florida.
Hoffman does an excellent job of realistically portraying the life of a prosecutor without dumbing down the legal terminology or burying the layperson in unnecessary jargon. Townsend is quite believable as the prosecutor with the the tough-as-nails veneer covering a fragile, vulnerable psyche. It will be interesting to see what comes of her somewhat unethical decision to conceal her conflict of interest. In real life, such a move might well result in the very thing she dreads the most -- a reversal of a conviction, with the case being retried by another prosecutor.
Yes, it's another legal thriller by yet another attorney-turned-novelist, but, for a first effort, it's a very entertaining read. Maybe I ought to get to work on my novel, too.
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