faintingviolet’s #CBR4 review #50 The Witness by Nora Roberts
Last Nora Roberts of CBR4! Well, for me J
Before the gargantuan task of the Cannonball had been set before me (by me, for a fantastic cause) I had stayed away from romance novels, and specifically Nora Roberts books for several years. My graduate program simply ate all the time I had, and a smaller part of me was ashamed at the sheer amount of romance novels I consumed to that point in my life. So, I took a break. Then I realized that if I was going to attempt a real go at this thing I needed books that I could sail through in a matter of hours to help offset the books which would take weeks to read. And also the weeks which would not permit much free time to read at all. This is when I fell back into love with Nora Roberts.
The Witness is perhaps a return to Roberts at her best. Earlier this year I reviewed The Search which along with Black Hills shows Roberts not at her thriller best. The Search and Black Hills each had their strong aspects and their weak moments, but The Witness is strong throughout. The Witness is the story of Elizabeth, a teenage genius who acts out against her controlling mother and finds herself caught in the middle of a mob execution. The book is broken up into four sections, each chronicling a different segment of Elizabeth’s life and named for a different person. The first section introduces the reader to the 16-year-old Elizabeth as she experiences that fateful night and the subsequent weeks in protective custody. Later sections delve into her life on the run, her current identity, the local sheriff determined to learn all about her, and her eventual plan to put things right.
I’ve intentionally left much of the detail out of this review, purely for laziness’ sake. I will mention that Roberts’ excellent job outlining her locations, from Chicago’s tony neighborhoods to Arkansas’ Ozark Mountains. This one also features a male protagonist straight from Roberts’ own central casting – Brooks Gleason, police chief in a small town after time in a big city police force, quirky parents, and two older sisters, one of whom is married with kids and they all live nearby. A truly fun read, possibly less for its thriller concepts and more so for intricate storytelling.
Cannonball Read IV 