Randy Singer's "False Witness"

Wear a seat belt if you read this novel.

You’re a bail bondsman in Las Vegas, and a pretty good one. One day, your wife gets kidnapped by the Chinese mafia, and you’re told horrible things will happen to her unless you find and deliver a professor from India – a professor with a very valuable algorithm, one that can undo the encryption protocols of the internet.

And you have only 48 hours. You track down various low-lifes, and you eventually find the professor, even if it means engaging in a little torture and physical violence of your own.

Thus begins Randy Singer’s False Witness. And the action never stops.

The bail bondsman and his wife end up testifying against various arrested Chinese mafia members, and go into a witness protection program. The program works only so long. They’re discovered in Atlanta, and three young law students find themselves caught up in kidnapping, murder, buildings blowing up around them and the feds crossing and double-crossing them at every turn, not to mention their supervising law professor.

Every page of this novel sizzles and erupts with action. And Singer keeps the reader guessing, with more twists and turns and endings that aren’t endings, and deaths that aren’t deaths, that you’re left feeling a bit breathless. Just when you think you have things figured out, you find you don’t.

The author’s own experience as a trial attorney applies well here. And he’s a trial attorney who happens to be a pastor, and a pastor with a passion for the Dalit people and Christians in India. All royalties from this book are being donated to the Dalit Freedom Network. (The Dalits play a small but important role in the story.)

False Witness is a terrific story. My only regret is that I didn’t read it while sitting on a beach.


True confession: I was provided a copy of the book by the publisher’s agent, but the review and whether I liked the book or not were left entirely to me. And I loved the book.