Final Judgment

By: Richard North Patterson

Narrated by: Lisa Banes

Long estranged from her blue-blooded New England family, attorney Caroline Masters is summoned home to defend her niece against charges of murder. Police found 22-year-old Brett Allen blood-splattered and incoherent near the scene of the crime; the weapon covered with her fingerprints.

Caroline has doubts of her own about Brett's innocence. But as the sensational trial heats up, she'll find disturbing inconsistencies in the testimony of the prosecution's star witness, and find herself facing some of the toughest challenges of her life and career--from trusting her former lover, state prosecutor Jackson Watts, to risking the federal judgeship she's worked her whole life for, to exposing a dark family secret that could save her niece, or destroy them both . . .©1995 by Richard North Patterson; (P)1995 by Random House Audio Publishing, Inc., All Rights Reserved Under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions, Reproduced by Arrangement with Random House Audio Publishing, Inc.

Critic reviews

"Dazzling . . .the pages almost seem to turn themselves. . . . The plot culminates in a classic courtroom confrontation."
--San Francisco Chronicle

"The novel builds to several breathtaking surprises."
--People

"Absorbing . . . A wrenching thriller . . . Patterson brings us slowly and with consummate skill into a story that winds this way, then that, before coming to a fully satisfying halt . . . One of those books you race to finish even though you don't want it to end . . . A great read."
--New York Daily News

The making of Caroline Masters

Great suspenseful James Patterson romp through the courthouse and the lives of Caroline Master's friends, family and all she left behind. What drives her to become the careerist she becomes is revealed in the twists of this murder case, a case that only Caroline can unravel. The pieces all fit nicely in the end , one which you may not see coming in exactly the way it does. That's rewarding enough in itself to entice a mystery reader, but the characters and verisimilitude of the legal work are an equally good draw. Highly recommended.

Good story - let down by two basic flaws.

The story is clever, although the writing style is a little heavy. The narrator is pretty good.

There are two basic problems with the book; 1. The audio quality is AWFUL - like someone recorded it off the radio. & 2. It is much shorter than advertised, less than 3 hours long. For some reason Audible has added three chapters after the story ends repeating sections you already heard.

audible is dishonest

This book advertises as a 5 hr book, but is actually less than 3 hours. At 2hrs 55min, it ends and reloops to about 56min and plays again. It is a total rip-off and I am ashamed of audible. I would not have ordered this book had I known how shady this was.