New Book Alert: Witness by Simon Maltman; Character Driven Suspense Thriller About Past Crimes and Sins

 

New Book Alert: Witness by Simon Maltman; Character Driven Suspense Thriller About Past Crimes and Sins

By Julie Sara Porter

Bookworm Reviews

Spoilers: Witness, Simon Maltman's suspense thriller, shows in graphic detail the proverbial Road to Hell along with the Good Intentions in which said road is paved.

Witness is a tense, edgy, but also character driven novel about Pastor Tom Carter, a Belfast-based minister with the International Church of Tertulian's Trinity (ICOTT). When he was a young man, he was a part of terrorist organizations. However, he has put that all behind him. He is a popular man of the cloth with a large following. He is happily married to Cherry and the father of an adorable daughter, Becky. He even has some far reaching plans to build a youth center that would help street kids, like he used to be, get a new start in life. He just needs some extra money to help build the center.

In a desperate attempt to get that money, Tom appeals to "Uncle" Paul, an old family friend and fellow former terrorist. Well Paul isn't as former as he appears. Even though he had been released from prison, he still has a toe in the old world as Tom learns. Paul says he will hand over the cash if Tom does him a favor.

Meanwhile, there is an extended kidnapping plot in which an unnamed family is abducted by two ruthless kidnappers. At first this subplot is suspenseful but appears unrelated to the main plot until we later learn who the players actually are and how they are linked to the rest of the story.

Maltman captures a Northern Ireland that is still struggling to recover from the violence that played into almost 100 years of their history. While on paper, tensions have cooled down and laws have been set to improve relations between Protestant and Catholic factions, the human heart corroded by decades of hatred is not always so easily swayed. Many of the characters are still caught up in their prejudices and lust for violence and people like Paul love to play into that. 

Paul is like a mob boss knowing others' weaknesses and using them against them. In his conversations with Tom, Paul is like a chess master playing against a new opponent. There are subtle suggestions that his allegiances to his former ways have less to do with national pride than they do with controlling his enemies and quenching a sadistic pleasure for blood. Tom is just one of many that he likes to control and force them to do exactly what he wants.

Tom is also a fascinating character. Unlike many religious figures in fiction, he sincerely practices his faith and wants to live a good life. He does everything that he can to repair the damage that he was instrumental in causing in his youth.

However, when Tom encounters Paul, he realizes that the more he tried to run from his past, the more it catches up to him. It is all too easy for him to be seduced back into that life because those feelings were still there. He tried to be a good faith driven person to hide what had been inside all along.

Once Tom follows Paul, his actions interfere with the rest of his life. He becomes a man easily swayed by darker impulses that were simply buried and just waiting to come out. He has an affair with a barmaid and the guilt eats away at his marriage to Cherry. He blackmails a fellow pastor with pederastic tendencies when he gets too close to the church's financial transactions and the sudden generous donation. While Tom still suffers from intense guilt, he goes along with these actions almost like an addict who can no longer stop himself.

The title Witness refers to a crime that Tom saw when he was a child that he had buried, but had changed his life forever. He is also a witness to his own self destruction as the good man that he tried to be is swallowed by the man he once was. He is helpless to stop his own transition into villainy until the end when he finds a way to stand up to Paul and go from the witness to the actor.