The Darkest Place

The darkest place

When your vision is clouded and there is no light at the end of a dreary tunnel you feel like a veil of dark clouds are covering your eyes and all you feel is despair. Your moods swings vary, and you often can’t control them as your whole life seems to be spiraling down a huge dark hole with no light in sight.

Robin Lockwood is about to experience her own darkest place as her life is about to take a turn from feeling jubilant and joyful to witnessing a moment of terror that will destroy and impact her life .

A man is on trial as rapist and attacker and shows no remorse even on trial in a courtroom. Thinking he’s immune and not taking it seriously. Why did Robin take the case? On top of the world and planning her wedding all she should have been thinking was about this amazing event. But when the judge boxes her in and asks her to take this man on as a client she will regret the favor forever. One minute all is fine but an irate and vengeance filled husband takes it all away in the flash of a gunshot. How did he get past the sensors and have a gun in the courtroom?

Robin would never be the same and what follows allows readers to know there is much more to come and her life to face as losing the one reason she was glad to be alive was taken away in a flash of a gunshot and now she faces dark days, sadness and deciding where her life belongs before she never rises from the darkest place within her new world.

Facing the reality of what happened caused Robin to be seriously traumatized. Family support is what she needed and going home to Elk Grove was the temporary solution as her mother was there and her family surrounded her until it was time to renter the world. But Robin gets a phone call asking that she assist on a case in her hometown a case whose dynamics will take her and her co-counsel down some dangerous paths and dealing with a killer, kidnapper and assaulting a couple . Margorie Lowman is the defendant in the trial and author Phillip Margolin explores and explains Baby shake syndrome as the cause for baby Roy aka Peter’s dangerous condition when she was arrested.

The prosecution presents its opening statements, and they are quite compelling and convincing, but Robin tries to refute it will she win in the end because the evidence does not point in her client’s favor? Shaken baby syndrome is serious. When you hear the testimonies of both sides you begin to form your own opinion about just how serious this syndrome is, and you decide which expert witness is right or wrong. Then we get reminded of why Robin is there as she flies back home to Portland and once again must defend Marjorie for the murder of her husband but not before we enter the courtroom and experience a well-planned trial.

As the trial begins both attorneys present expert witnesses that give their medical opinions about this syndrome, and we begin to wonder which one is right. The prosecution presents two doctors who appear qualities and whose opinions claim that Loman was guilty of abusing Roy/Peter the three stages of the syndrome and then the bruises they found on him. However, Robin presents Dr. Lancaster, and he refutes their findings claiming that one is an ER doctor and not qualitied in the field to make a proper diagnosis and claiming the only way it could be verified is if they did experiments on children to decide whether what these doctors claim is true. Hard to decide and the evidence is strong on both sides and readers might have mixed feelings about this case especially when you hear the verdict and the final words of the jury.

The trial is over, and she is found not guilty but rearrested for the murder and torture of her husband. To defend her the firm hired a new investigator and he found out the names of the two men that came to her house and threated to take her out if she did not give them 250000 dollars owed to them for her husband’s gambling debt. Cunning and clever Loman was smart and crafty, and Robin would defend her once more as she found out the names of the two men, had them in the courtroom but then were shot dead by Loman. How can she keep getting away with murder and what is the truth behind her husband’s death? Why would Joel let himself be tortured and killed when a simple transfer of money would have stopped DeBell and Callahan the two henchmen from toruting him. adding the money, he embezzled to the sum she took form his and Marjorie’s joint accounts, the gold he hid worth ten million dollars and a quarter of a million is like petty cash. With the help of one of the detectives on the original case things take on a different turn and the truth just might come out. She was considered postpartum psychosis after having given birth to Roy. Was he faking it? Paranoid delusions were they real? The evidence is there but will anyone follow it and find the right path to justice. Once again author Phillip Margolin creates a bizarre twist, unusual reality and Robin Lockwood must face her choices, decide on her path but will have to live as we all do with the choices we make. What happens when a defendant appears innocent and yet you are unsure? How does someone defend a person when they know in their heart they might be guilty? When you experience and are allowed privy to the final conversations between Marjorie and Robin the shockwaves created by the author and the uneasy feeling you might get might even put you the reader in the same Darkest Place as Robin

A lawyer that is relentless, hardworking and persistent and will stop at nothing until she gets her client freed but at the end of this all just what does Robin realize as she is still as a result IN THE DARKEST PLACE!

Fran Lewis: Just reviews