Star Witness is about a man on trial for murder - a man recognized as one of the film industry's most successful writers/directors, a man of almost mythic drive and talent, and someone who looks more guilty with every passing witness. Attorney Joseph Antonelli - suave, philosophical, fearless, and cagey - takes up the director's defense for the murder of his wife, the actress every woman wants to be and every man wants to possess. Despite Antonelli's flawless examination of the prosecution's witnesses, the jury finds fewer and fewer reasons to doubt. Then the director shows Antonelli the script he considers his masterpiece - a re-imagining of Orson Welles's Citizen Kane - with a visionary film director as its hero. In this story-within-a-story, the accused reveals his version of the tragedy - the secrets of his marriage, and the ominous events that led to his wife's death. In it we see the way art can imitate life - and unmask a killer even the court can't find. Star Witness is a breath-taking novel about the nature of fame and the ever-confusing intersection of truth and fantasy, dream and desire.
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Book Description
Editorial Reviews
Amazon.com Review
Both a legal thriller and a Hollywood novel, Star Witness recounts a sensational murder and trial at the very pinnacle of the movie business. It's also a meditation on the magic--and the deceptive power--of the movies. Mary Margaret Flanders, the most charismatic star in Hollywood, is found nude with her throat cut, floating in the swimming pool of her palatial mansion. The chief suspect is her husband, the brilliant director Stanley Roth. Enter Joseph Antonelli, one of the nation's top criminal-defense lawyers (and the star of four previous D.W. Buffa tales), who is soon grappling with vicious Hollywood politics, a huge media circus, and a client so complex and unpredictable that even his own lawyer doubts his innocence.
Buffa's courtroom scenes are full of authentic details that reflect his years as a defense lawyer, though they crackle a little less than in his other books. And some readers will surely bog down in his distinctive prose style, with its curious, archaic formality ("She was about to tell me something more about the difficulties with which Stanley Roth had to deal"). Nonetheless, this ambitious book offers many pleasures as it plays with our obsessions with celebrities and the movies. Its solution will keep you guessing right up to the last page, and perhaps even beyond. --Nicholas H. Allison --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
From Publishers Weekly
This uneven fifth novel in the Joseph Antonelli series (The Legacy, etc) has the colorful trial lawyer defending a legendary Hollywood director and studio mogul accused of murdering his movie star wife. Mary Margaret Flanders is killed just before filming the final scenes of a major new movie with her husband's studio. Stanley Roth, her husband, is known for his volatile temper, and becomes the leading suspect. Antonelli takes the case, and though he is sure that his client is innocent, he can't pin down the real killer. The list of suspects includes Roth's partner, who wants to take control of the studio; Flanders's college professor ex-hubby (father of the star's only child); and a blackmailing wannabe screenwriter cop, who had once been to the couple's house to look into Flanders's domestic violence complaint. Central to all this is Roth's obsessive conviction that the entire crime is a replay of his own masterpiece screenplay, Blue Zephyr, which he has yet to make into a movie. While the plot is solid, the first half of the thriller is considerably slowed by windy, repetitious description and exposition ("That's what she was: a young woman in love, but not with a man-with a camera: any camera, not just a motion picture camera.... That's what she lived for: to be on camera, to be on film..."). The pace does pick up when the action shifts to the courtroom, but this effort isn't up to Buffa's best.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
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More About the Author
DW Buffa was born in San Francisco and raised in the Bay Area. After graduation from Michigan State University, he studied under Leo Strauss, Joseph Cropsey and Hans J. Morgenthau at the University of Chicago where he earned both an M.A. and a Ph. D. in political science. He received his J.D. degree from Wayne State University in Detroit. Buffa was a criminal defense attorney for 10 years and his seven Joseph Antonelli novels strive to reflect, from his own experience, what a courtroom lawyer does, the way he (or she) thinks, and the way he feels about what he does.
Buffa had been writing for pleasure for many years when Henry Holt and Co. decided to publish his first novel, The Defense, in 1997. The week it was published, Christopher Lehmann-Haupt, the literary critic of the New York Times, called The Defense 'an accomplished first novel' which 'leaves you wanting to go back to the beginning and read it over again.'
The Defense was followed by The Prosecution and then The Judgment, which was one of the five books nominated in 2002 for the Edgar Award as best novel of the year. While the first three novels are set in Portland, the author's fourth novel, The Legacy, takes place in San Francisco and is as much a political as it is legal thriller. Star Witness tells the story of Stanley Roth, one of the most powerful men in Hollywood, who is charged with murder of his famous movie star wife.
Breach of Trust, published in 2004, was considered by one critic as "one of the few books that fifty years from now will really matter." It offers readers a scintillating look at Washington politics. Buffa's seventh Joseph Antonelli novel, Trial by Fire, was released in 2005; in this new book, the focus is on the media and the role that television "Talking heads" increasingly play in very high profile criminal cases. Publishers Weekly says of Trial by Fire, "In this intelligent, gripping legal thriller...fast moving dialogue and fine sense of characterization keep the reader hanging on for the ride."
D.W. Buffa lives in Northern California. You can visit his Official Website at dwbuffa.net if you'd like to correspond with him through email.
Buffa had been writing for pleasure for many years when Henry Holt and Co. decided to publish his first novel, The Defense, in 1997. The week it was published, Christopher Lehmann-Haupt, the literary critic of the New York Times, called The Defense 'an accomplished first novel' which 'leaves you wanting to go back to the beginning and read it over again.'
The Defense was followed by The Prosecution and then The Judgment, which was one of the five books nominated in 2002 for the Edgar Award as best novel of the year. While the first three novels are set in Portland, the author's fourth novel, The Legacy, takes place in San Francisco and is as much a political as it is legal thriller. Star Witness tells the story of Stanley Roth, one of the most powerful men in Hollywood, who is charged with murder of his famous movie star wife.
Breach of Trust, published in 2004, was considered by one critic as "one of the few books that fifty years from now will really matter." It offers readers a scintillating look at Washington politics. Buffa's seventh Joseph Antonelli novel, Trial by Fire, was released in 2005; in this new book, the focus is on the media and the role that television "Talking heads" increasingly play in very high profile criminal cases. Publishers Weekly says of Trial by Fire, "In this intelligent, gripping legal thriller...fast moving dialogue and fine sense of characterization keep the reader hanging on for the ride."
D.W. Buffa lives in Northern California. You can visit his Official Website at dwbuffa.net if you'd like to correspond with him through email.
Customer Reviews
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
Not a 'Star',
By A Customer
This review is from: Star Witness (Hardcover)
This novel is just dreadful--execrably written and poorly plotted, with badly drawn, inconsistent characters who ruminate endlessly (and pointlessly) on all things Hollywood. The writing is pedestrian and hackneyed--I thought I'd scream if I had to read one more labored metaphor. The author seems to have gotten his knowledge of both legal maneuvering and the movie industry from hack novels; nowhere does he display any true experience or understanding of either. He can't even come up with good names for the characters--"Mary Margaret Flanders" for a sex goddess? Ick! Generally, I like legal thrillers AND books about the movie industry, so for me to hate this book as viscerally as I do took some doing. If I had spent actual time reading this piece of drek instead of merely listening to it as I drove to work, I would be far more bitter about it than I am. I hope you learn from my error and don't waste your time.
5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
No Oscar for this "Star Witness",
By A Customer
This review is from: Star Witness (Hardcover)
Having read and thoroughly enjoyed Buffa's previous four books, I was astonished at how disappointing this one was. The basic idea was intriguing, but neither the storytelling itself, the characterizations, the pacing, nor the language were anywhere near as sharp as in his previous books. Joseph Antonelli is a fascinating character, and one of the things that has always attracted me was his intellectual approach to the law. This is a man who has inherited an incredible library and who is clearly well educated, and in this book there were so many basic grammar and syntax errors that it's hard to imagine it was edited at all, let alone proofread! Everything about it bespoke a kind of writing fatigue, and I can only hope with his next book the author will have regained his previous edge.
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A Classic In The Lawyer/Thriller Genre,
By
This review is from: Star Witness (Paperback)
This is one of the best novels of the law/courtroom/murder mystery thrillers I've read - and I read them all. The characters are so finely drawn, the writing itself so good, and the plot so engrossing that it just sweeps you along. A book that is very difficult to put down; you just have-to keep reading. Author Buffa is one of the very best at what he does.
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