Book Review: The Third Victim

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This is my book review of The Third Victim by author Phillip Margolin.

Book Summary:

One day, a woman, tortured and bound, stumbles onto a road in rural Oregon. She tells the man who stopped to help her that she’d been kidnapped and tortured, but had escaped.

The woman is lucky to be alive because two women, similarly tortured before her with burns and bruises, were found dead.

She manages to show the authorities the house where she was held captive. The owner of the house is a prominent attorney named Alex Mason.

He is quickly arrested at his summer home, and his wife tells the police about his sexual sadism. The evidence against the man seems to be concrete.

The woman Alex Mason hires to defend him is Regina Barrister, well known as “The Sorceress” for her legendary courtroom victories.

But there’s something Regina is hiding. She is slipping, and she knows it. Regina has lapses of memory and sometimes forgets what car hers is in a parking lot.

She knows if this is found out, it will be the end of her career, and it is all she has. But she takes on this client anyway.

She has hired a young lawyer, Robin Lockwood, to be second chair. The Alex Mason trial is her first big case. Robin becomes worried about her boss’s lapses of memory.

And the Alex Mason case for her just does not add up. Something feels wrong about the whole thing.

Will her boss be able to adequately defend him? His life depends on it.

About the Author:

Phillip Margolin has written many New York Times bestsellers.

He’s the winner of the Distinguished Northwest Writer Award. Margolin lives in Portland, Oregon.

He has had a long career as a criminal defense attorney, handling 30 murder cases.