New Review

Being a witness to a murder can be dangerous. The killers can take umbrage at the possibility that the witness will point a finger in their direction. But this is one witness who has an additional reason to be concerned. She’s Providence Rhode Island’s assistant attorney general who had been out drinking and carousing with friends the night of the homicide, and who knows that being a witness will jeopardize her office’s standing at any foreseeable trial and certainly won’t enhance her own job security by telling her boss about what little she saw at the crime scene. But she’s been spotted there by an unfriendly fellow worker. The truth is out. The AG fires her, and a desperate Marianna Melone accepts a job offer to be in charge of the “ethics” program at Holton College where the murder victim had been a student. It’s a position that becomes a serious challenge, as more coeds die at the hands of a serial killer, a drug ring on campus emerges, and Melone finds herself emotionally entangled with the ex-cop who is head of security. DEFENSELESS is really about a private college where learning takes second place to endowments, where the staff’s job is to cover-up the wild antics of their privileged student body and where a killer stalks the halls. Marsella has come up with a clever plot, a rather unlikely killer and plenty of suspense.

-       John A. Broussard

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