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Synopsis

Evil sees you

Two years ago William Bantling was put on death row by Florida’s Assistant State Attorney, CJ Townsend - for the torture and murder of eleven young women.

Evil hears you

Now three cops crucial to Bantling’s conviction have been brutally slain. CJ knew them all - and the shocking secret they took to their graves.

Evil knows you

But it’s clear that somebody else also knows the truth - though their reasons for wanting it kept quiet are very different to CJ’s. Which leaves her with a terrifying choice: reveal the secret she swore to keep and stay alive - or be its last witness, and the next to die ...

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Interview

Jilliane Hoffman has been able to draw on her experience as an Assistant State Attorney [1992 – 1996] to bring to life the world of C.J Townsend with chilling accuracy. Exclusively for www.penguin.co.uk Jilliane reveals the challenges on building on a successful story line and her research, but remains tightlipped on if we will see any more of C.J and Dominick in the future…

Last Witness is a sequel to your bestselling first novel, Retribution. What were some of the challenges you faced in developing a continuing storyline?
There were two distinct challenges that I faced in creating a sequel and follow-up storyline to Retribution. The plotline for Last Witness was imagined and worked through while I was writing Retribution, so the challenges actually began then. My goal was to write a sequel with a suspenseful continuing storyline that could definitely stand alone, but to accomplish that, I also needed to subtly work-in the plot and re-introduce the characters of Retribution without giving away the ending for first-time readers. It was definitely a challenge, but I’m really happy with the way it came out. It was also great fun to continue to develop the characters that I have come to love, in particular this time, Special Agent Dominick Falconetti.

What kind of research did you need to do to write Last Witness?
Researching Last Witness actually brought me to some really interesting places. I’m very hands-on, and if I am writing about a place, I want to have been there, smelled it, walked it, felt it. So I rode in a squad car with an experienced Miami Beach police officer, on the explicit instruction that he “take me to some wonderful, dark places to kill people on Miami Beach. In particular, uniformed police officers.” (I must admit, he did seem a bit anxious with me in the car after that.) I also attended an autopsy at the Miami-Dade Medical Examiner’s Office, which gave me some wicked ideas. And lastly—and probably the most sobering place my research took me—was death row at Florida State Prison. FSP is the Florida prison where the absolute worst-of-the-worst offenders are housed—all 1200 of them. Many of them are in there for murder. They are so violent and anti-social, that they are all confined in a lockdown, single-cell environment 24/7, with the limited exception of exercise time in the yard three times a week. But even there, they are each assigned to their own chain-linked “dog run,” so that they don’t actually have physical contact with any other inmate. And, of course, what makes FSP so infamous is that for some inmates, it is their last stop. Two special wings house forty-four death row inmates, and the execution chamber itself is in the basement. It was a very chilling experience to actually walk the row, and look into the eyes of the men who are the state’s most grisly and infamous killers.
 

We can’t help but notice from the picture on your jacket and your biographical data that Miami prosecutor C.J. Townsend sounds and looks a lot like you. Is Retribution or Last Witness at all autobiographical?
I get that question a lot. I believe that you should write what you know. And so, in creating the character Chloe Larson/C.J. Townsend, I did borrow a bit from myself. (Although I must admit that a size four with cascading long blonde hair was a bit of wishful thinking and literary license.)  I put her in the same law school I graduated from, in the same apartment that I used to live in Queens, New York, and ultimately in the same job that I had, as a prosecutor in Miami. That way I knew what she would be thinking, what she would be smelling, seeing, feeling, hearing. I knew where the clown would enter her apartment in Queens, and why she couldn’t hear him when he did. Mentally, I could picture it all. Now, while I, myself, have never been a victim of rape, I have counseled many, many women who have. So I was able to draw on those experiences in helping me develop C.J.’s character and, ultimately, her conviction.

The crime scenes and characters that you describe throughout both Retribution and Last Witness seem so frighteningly real. Are any of your books based on true cases that you worked?
The storylines are completely fictional—there has never been a serial killer nicknamed Cupid in Miami. Nor has there been a serial killer anywhere, to my knowledge, who has targeted police officers. However, I have prosecuted a serial rapist before and I have worked on serial homicide investigations and witnessed my share of homicide scenes. In writing Florida’s sexual predator notification laws, I have personally researched hundreds of cases of sex offenders and stood up in court many times to make sure they stay behind bars. I definitely have borrowed from my experiences in those cases, so in that sense both novels are based on true crime. The characters—from the police and detectives and judges—are all in some way created from the personalities of the hundreds of cops, special agents, judges, prosecutors and defense attorneys that I have worked alongside with in my career. My characters’ voices are all ones I have listened to for years, which is probably why they sound so real. They are.

Will we see more of C.J. and Dom in future novels?
I won’t give away any endings. I hate that. I will say that my next book is back in the courtroom with another monster. It is titled Plea of Insanity and the research I have had to do for that has been utterly fascinating.

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