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![The Secret Witness (Shepard & Gray Book 1) by [Victor Methos]](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/51lm9CZvL7L._SY346_.jpg)
The Secret Witness (Shepard & Gray Book 1) Kindle Edition
Victor Methos (Author) See search results for this author |
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From the bestselling author of A Killer’s Wife comes the thrilling first installment in the Shepard & Gray series, featuring a young sheriff who teams up with a former prosecutor to stop a copycat killer.
This is Reaper speaking.
So begins an anonymous letter published in a Utah newspaper after a young couple is viciously murdered. Tooele County sheriff Elizabeth Gray leads the investigation into the double homicide, which is eerily reminiscent of a string of brutal killings years ago. When the letter leads detectives to yet another body, Gray calls on an old friend for help.
Former prosecutor Solomon Shepard is still struggling to recover from the deadly courtroom attack that ended his career. He’s been keeping a safe distance from the action, teaching criminology seminars about serial murders and psychopathology—until Gray asks for his help on the Reaper case.
As the body count mounts, Shepard and Gray race to unravel the deranged design of a copycat killer—and find themselves in a face-off with an enemy they never saw coming.
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherThomas & Mercer
- Publication date1 July 2022
- File size3650 KB
Product description
Review
“A red-hot suspenser aimed at readers for whom a single serial killer just isn’t enough.” —Kirkus Reviews
From the Publisher
As the killings intensify, and the letters keep coming, local sheriff Billie Gray finds herself out of her depth and in desperate need of help. Solomon Shepard was the most cunning and dedicated homicide prosecutor the Tooele County Attorney’s Office ever had. But when a defendant attacked him in court, sending him to the hospital for weeks, Shepard stopped practicing law. Knowing how brilliant Shepard is at serial murderer psychopathology, Gray begs him to come back to the game and help her solve this case.
Together, Shepard and Gray make an unstoppable team in this nail-biting series starter. Winner of the Harper Lee Prize for Legal Fiction, Victor Methos masterfully blends courtroom drama and the crimes of a serial killer into this fast-paced thriller. The Secret Witness is Methos’s best work yet.
—Megha Parekh, Editor
About the Author
At the age of thirteen, when his best friend was interrogated by the police for over eight hours and confessed to a crime he didn’t commit, Victor Methos knew he would one day become a lawyer.
After graduating from law school at the University of Utah, Methos cut his teeth as a prosecutor for Salt Lake City before founding what would become the most successful criminal defense firm in Utah.
In ten years, Methos conducted more than one hundred trials. One particular case stuck with him, and it eventually became the basis for his first major bestseller, The Neon Lawyer. Since that time, Methos has focused his work on legal thrillers and mysteries, winning the Harper Lee Prize for The Hallows and an Edgar nomination for Best Novel for his title A Gambler’s Jury. He currently splits his time between southern Utah and Las Vegas.
Product details
- ASIN : B09DYFXKYW
- Publisher : Thomas & Mercer (1 July 2022)
- Language : English
- File size : 3650 KB
- Text-to-Speech : Enabled
- Screen Reader : Supported
- Enhanced typesetting : Enabled
- X-Ray : Enabled
- Word Wise : Enabled
- Print length : 301 pages
- Best Sellers Rank: 3,997 in Kindle Store (See Top 100 in Kindle Store)
- 63 in Legal Thrillers (Kindle Store)
- 115 in Legal Thrillers (Books)
- 300 in Serial Killers (Kindle Store)
- Customer reviews:
About the author

At the age of thirteen, when his best friend was interrogated by the police for over eight hours and confessed to a crime he didn’t commit, Victor Methos knew he would one day become a lawyer.
After graduating from law school at the University of Utah, Methos sharpened his teeth as a prosecutor for Salt Lake City before founding what would become the most successful criminal defense firm in Utah.
In ten years Methos conducted more than one hundred trials. One particular case stuck with him, and it eventually became the basis for his first major bestseller, The Neon Lawyer. Since that time, Methos has focused his work on legal thrillers and mysteries, earning a Harper Lee Prize for The Hallows and an Edgar nomination for Best Novel for his title A Gambler’s Jury. He currently splits his time between southern Utah and Las Vegas.
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Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 16 July 2022
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I’m not sure where the tag ‘best selling writer’ comes from i.e.from well written books or churning out so many books that the sale numbers place the author in a best selling category. I suspect the second option in this case.
The storyline and characters are mundane, well used and run of the mill. I found the book to be predictable due to these reasons and as a result I wasn’t drawn into it. Reminded me of the Mills and Boon books of years ago where one story was the same as the next.
If readers do choose this book they will think they’ve read it before.
Note to authors: please throw the tick list away and write something original.
County Sheriff Elizabeth Gray is investigating into a couple of murders in a small Utah town that mirror the killings of a serial killer several years earlier. As with the original crimes the perpetrator has sent letters to the local newspaper claiming to be "The Reaper". Is it the original murderer,who was never caught,making a return or a copycat killer? Gray enlists the help of former prosecutor Solomon Shepherd who worked on the original investigation.
With the body-count rising and things taking a dramatic and personal twist the intrepid duo go on the hunt for a deadly killer.
While I quite liked the main characters and the way they interacted the actual investigation ends as a bit of a damp squib rather than any kind of Eureka moment . After a decent build up the suspect is tracked down very simply via a bit of very basic detective work, helped by the stupidity of the person Gray and Shepherd are looking for.
Suspect found the book jumps to a court case,not to establish the suspect's guilt but for reasons I won't reveal so as not to spoil the plot. Events between the arrest and the court case are pretty much skipped over which I found a bit odd,almost as if a couple of chapters were missing. The behaviour of the main characters in the trial border on the farcical,let's just say we're not talking John Grisham here.
Maybe I've been a bit harsh,I did enjoy it but too much of it wasn't convincing and some of the tale bordered on ludicrous, The main characters likewise,Gray,Shepherd and a member of the suspect's family were interesting ,the actual "perp" totally unconvincing.
There are places where it's hard to believe that Victor Methos is an established and very successful author and it's very much a "curate's egg" book but overall,despite a few irritations,I quite enjoyed it as a light "3 star" read
I don’t know how the author did it, but this book got under my skin very quickly indeed. I was reading it on my own in the dark, and I had to put it down after the first few pages, as the hairs were literally rising on the back of my neck. That happened more than once and it became a daylight only book for me, as it was playing on my mind, which is a rare thing for me.
The characters are well-written, likeable and believable. There are little extra touches, such has friendships, relationships and snatches of background that really round these characters out, and explains their thought-processes and behaviours; if you’re speed-reading, you may well miss these and the book will be a different experience for you. The plot is good and well-thought out, with enough twists and turns to keep it interesting right to the last page, and there’s not many books that actually do that.
I want to read the next in the series and I want to read it now… what does that tell you? Very happy to recommend.