House Witness
Page 32
There was one other loose end that Ella would deal with once she was out of prison. She hadn’t decided yet what she’d do—but she’d definitely do something.
The loose end was DeMarco.
Acknowledgments
The idea for this book came when I was listening to the radio one day, probably on my way to the golf course, and heard about some case where a guy was being tried for killing someone four years after he was arrested. Four years! A little research showed that two or three years between the arrest and the trial wasn’t at all unusual. My first thought was: Why should it take so long? My second thought was: Man, I’ll bet all kinds of things can go wrong if it takes that long before the trial is held. Well, my third thought was: What if somebody made it his—or her—job to make sure things go wrong before the trial? And thus House Witness.
I particularly want to thank attorney Stephen Bean and judge James Donohue for taking the time to answer a host of legal questions I had when writing this novel. When it comes to matters of law, however, any errors in this book are mine alone—and in some cases I decided to take a wee bit of literary license when it came to the law for the sake of the plot.
I also want to thank Grove Atlantic for being willing to publish the twelfth Joe DeMarco book. In particular, I want to thank Morgan Entrekin, publisher of Grove Atlantic, for taking the time to personally read and comment on this book; and my editor, Allison Malecha. This is the first time Allison and I have worked on a book together and it was a pleasure. Also, I want to thank copyeditor Tom Cherwin and Managing Editor Julia Berner-Tobin for their excellent work on this book.