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.
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.
