Innocence

David Hosp
Grand Central Publishing (2007)
ISBN 9780446580144
Reviewed by AJ Cooper for Reader Views (7/07)


Scott Finn is a lawyer in Boston that is far separated from the big law firms he once worked for. He employs Tom Kozlowski, a retired Boston police officer, as an investigator.  He also has a legal intern working for him, turned investigator and legal intern, Lissa Krantz. Finn mostly handles divorce cases now, but is approached by Mark Dobson, an attorney at a large law firm. Mr. Dobson works on pro bono cases and wants Finn’s help in bringing an old case to trial with new evidence. Finn agrees to it without realizing what he has just gotten himself and his friends/employees into.  Vicente Salazar was charged and tried for shooting a police officer 15 years ago.

Mr. Dobson feels that he can prove that Salazar was setup and he is really an innocent man. Kozlowski was in the police department at the time of the shooting and good friends with the female officer that was shot and paralyzed. Kozlowski agrees to ride along and hear what Salazar has to say at the state penitentiary. Finn and Kozlowski listen to Salazar’s story and Finn thinks there may be a possibility that the man is innocent.  Kozlowski does not believe the story, yet agrees to help Finn with the preliminary investigation.

Finn has his doubts and is ready to leave the case behind. Dobson turns up dead and Finn is forced to argue the case before the judge to proceed forward with a trial. Finn is now truly convinced he must go forward and find the real shooter. He runs into trouble with the police and with the gang that Salazar is a supposed member of. His life and the lives of his friends are in doubt. Lissa turns up badly injured, and much worse, but will not talk to anyone but Finn and Kozlowski. They are out for revenge now. 

I was so caught up in the story that I truly did not expect what happened at the end.  It is very interesting about lawyers and how they process and discover information.  This book, “Innocence,” offers a little bit of romance and intrigue, along with some violence that is not overbearing. I enjoyed discovering all of the twists and turns and the love interest. Any of my friends and family will be happy to read this book. I also enjoyed that the author was a practicing lawyer and that he is involved in an organization involved with pro bono work on cases for individuals incarcerated that they felt had been wrongly accused.

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