** Secret Life of a Juror: Voir Dire: The Domestic Violence Query (A Juror's Perspective Book 4) is the latest in the series triggered by his experiences as a death penalty juror at the trial of Marissa-Suzanne "Reese" DeVault for the murder of her husband, Dale Harrell.
As DeVault alleged her husband had physically abused her, Sanders took a deeply personal interest in the case as he says that he and his younger brother and sister were each the victims of continual violent physical and emotional abuse at the hands of their wealthy, professional parents.
While it is unarguable that domestic abuse cuts across all strata of society, some of the author’s claims do not bear the closest scrutiny. Understandably he has used pseudonyms to protect his siblings’ identity. But it is hardly credible that any of them could have received such regular, violent attacks – much more than ‘mere’ beatings with belts or tree branches – and then survived into adulthood, all be they deeply traumatised.
Then there is Sanders’s further claim that despite photographic evidence of his injuries held by the local social services, that his father held such sway in their small town that he could inveigle a judge to so pervert the course of justice that he, the victim, was convicted of perjury and sent briefly to a young offenders’ institution although no trial ever took place.
Finally we as readers are left to accept or reject these events at face value and believe them - or not …
But despite several plot-holes, factual, grammatical and stylistic errors the book makes a compelling, powerful if terrifying read and we see at firsthand, not only how domestic violence is every much as addictive as that on any battlefield but that it is also quite wickedly contagious.
** Secret Life of a Juror: Voir Dire: The Domestic Violence Query (A Juror's Perspective Book 4) is available from Amazon @ $3.99 (Kindle) and $18.99 (Paperback).
© Natalie Wood (24 June 2018)
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