This book follows one called Trial Junkies which I had not
read. To begin with we see a young adult called Jamal who
is reduced to mugging people with his father's gun after
losing his job. He's not sorry for the wealthy people he
robs. But a well-off girl he knows is staggering through a
parking lot one night, dressed up and weeping, seemingly
out of her mind on something. Jamal decides to take her
home safely, but before they get far, a police car draws up
and the officers jump to the wrong conclusion.
NEGLIGENCE then turns to a courtroom story. Jamal is on
trial and has been vilified. Ethan Hutchinson, known as
Hutch, has left a film career and replaced addictions with
obsessing over cases and procedures, learning how the
justice system works. Through subterfuge he manages to talk
to Jamal in a hospital, and the young man tells him that
the girl, Kelly was with him and safe, but someone hit him
and next morning Kelly was found dead. He blames the
police. Hutch has promised to share this with an online
news programme, so he tells the story to reporter friend
Matt.
Matt is not impressed with Jamal's defence lawyer,
especially after he calls his client a little punk in a
discussion. The well-off neighbourhood where Kelly's family
lives is a good contrast, and her expensive school,
Eccelstone Academy, has lost another young lady of late, a
girl who died in her own bedroom. Some months previously
another girl from the school had her death recorded....
Matt starts to wonder if there's a connection. When Matt
is attacked, Hutch has to take over the story.
There is a lot of looking back at the story from the first
book and someone who had read it might enjoy this aspect
more. Journalists are seen as just digging up
sensationalist stories and saleable scandals, so many
people have no wish to speak with them. Quite amusingly
Hutch's uninspiring TV career has gained him some unwanted
fans; one woman declares herself in love with him. Hutch
recalls that he hated the boredom and loneliness of school,
but today he doesn't seem to have much of a work or social
life either. Robert Gregory Browne doesn't try too hard to
give the laconic Hutch a personality, but his friend can
rely on him. NEGLIGENCE started slowly but warmed up after
a while and became a readable thriller with very human
characters.
She was found with a bullet in her head, and the kid she was
last seen with woke up drugged and disoriented in a
neighbor's back yard. Now the kid is awaiting trial for her
murder, and reporter Matt Isaacs is convinced that there's
more here than meets the eye.
Matt's old college pal, Ethan "Hutch" Hutchinson--washed-up
actor and newly-minted trial junkie--isn't so sure... until
a violent attack propels Hutch and his friends into the
middle of a conspiracy that takes them all the way from the
courthouse gallery to the not so hallowed halls of an
exclusive Chicago prep school... straight into the hands of
a killer.
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