James Scott Bell. Final Witness. Woodland Hills CA: Compendium P, 2014. E-book.

“You can always tell the Communist. He’s the one with no soul in his eyes.”

Those were the words of our commanding officer as a dozen or so of us “Coasties” were being briefed before boarding a cargo ship from an Eastern Bloc country back in the seventies.

Usually cargo inspections involved two or three men; however, since this ship was from a Communist country and the Communists had vowed to bury us, the boarding party was larger. We had to make sure there were no weapons or anything nuclear aboard the ship.

Yes, there was something about the eyes of the political officer, which every Communist-flag merchant vessel had to insure there were no defections and to promote the Party line. His eyes appeared to have nothing behind them. It was as if everyone knew he had made his Faustian trade for the promises of the Party.

The Party boss on the ship was probably some apparatchik who unlike most Russians (the ship and crew were not Russian, but he was) had a chance to see some of the world.

Now imagine a similar Russian with no soul who was a trained KGB assassin. Imagine that the Soviet Union has fallen, so this assassin has to look to organized crime for continued employment. He is a killer with no soul, no conscience. He is evil personified. And he is the main antagonist in Final Witness.

Final Witness bills itself as a legal thriller. It is. But the story moves along not so much by lawyers trying to outwit each other—though they do that—but by a very elemental evil personified in The Man.

Most people, even those that hire him, do not know his real name, just his street handle. He suddenly appears and just as suddenly disappears. Even if The Man is not hired to directly kill someone, he is hired to threaten, to make an offer no one can refuse. Whenever a person who is arrested hires him, the witnesses seem to suddenly disappear or change their minds. One witness to a simple hit and run in New York City disappeared and just his head was discovered at Coney Island about ten days later.

Rachel Ybarra, a law student at the University of Southern California (USC), is interning at the U.S. District Attorney’s Office in Los Angeles. The book jokingly says USC stands for “University of Spoiled Children,” and this was written five years before Operation Varsity Blues made the news! She is assigned to research a murder for hire case in which a leader of the Russian Mafia known as Mr. X has been arrested for calling for the hit. Mr. X runs a limousine service, and his lawyer claims he is just an honest businessman who is being singled out because he is Russian.

The case becomes shaky as two witnesses back out. Rachel is asked to help persuade a reluctant ex-girlfriend of Mr. X to testify. The woman is in Connecticut, and before Rachel returns to California, the flamboyant lawyer for Mr. X already knows the identity of the protected witness. Someone on the inside is feeding information to the lawyer for the defendant.

Rachel soon learns how that is done when The Man accosts her. He is disguised, so she cannot recognize or describe him. He makes his business clear. Give me information about the trial of Mr. X, and you and your grandmother will live.

The Man is diabolical, literally. He shows up at random times just to let Rachel know he is keeping tabs on her. He calls her at odd hours. He is a stalker for hire.

By the third chapter of Final Witness, the tension has grown and it does not let up. The story is a combination of a page turner and a spiritual battle.

The author is a former lawyer, and his acknowledgments include a few other barristers. Having had little experience in court—whenever I go in for jury duty, they never take me because of the above experience I had with law enforcement in the Coast Guard—I was struck how this book appears to show that nowadays witnesses are attacked by lawyers on both sides if they hold religious beliefs. I thought there was an Amendment to the Constitution that made that immaterial in most cases, but apparently not. Perhaps we will be hearing of people taking the First the way witnesses now take the Fifth.

As in many such tense tales, Rachel does not know whom to trust. Two FBI agents were assigned to protect one witness in the case of Mr. X. The witness somehow kills himself like Pentangeli in Godfather II, and the agents somehow miss it. Can they be trusted? Of course, there is office politics and bullying both in the D.A.’s office and in the courtroom. Can anyone in those places be trusted?

That is just how The Man likes it. If his victim thinks he or she is completely alone, it makes his job easier and his threats more real. Rachel learns or rediscovers, though, that she is not alone. Without giving too much away, I am reminded of the words to Luther’s famous hymn:

Would we in our own strength confide,
Our striving would be losing
Were not the right man at our side,
The man of God’s own choosing.

Final Witness is riveting. It will get your attention.