FROM OUR EDITORS

Our Review
Trauma Within the Witness "Destruction" Program
The Program is Stephen White's ninth novel, and it offers a slight but effective departure from the main line of his career. Like his previous eight novels, The Program features White's recurring protagonist, clinical psychologist Alan Gregory. Unlike those earlier books, this one casts Gregory as a supporting player in a larger drama, a drama involving a woman on the run, an assortment of professional hit men, and the unnatural pressures of day-to-day life in the Witness Protection Program.

The woman on the run is Kirsten Lord, a New Orleans-based D.A. who successfully prosecutes a local drug dealer for a series of rapes, then finds herself threatened with violent reprisals. "Remember this," the dealer tells her on the day of his conviction. "Every precious thing I lose, you will lose two." Several weeks later, that grim prophecy begins to come true, as Kirsten's husband is shot to death. Shortly afterward, when an unknown woman nearly succeeds in abducting her daughter, Kirsten enters the Witness Security Program (WITSEC) and attempts to establish a new, anonymous existence in Boulder, Colorado.

White excels at conveying the tension, trauma, and sense of dislocation inherent in shedding the remnants of an old life and beginning a new one. Kirsten Lord (now Peyton Francis) finds herself facing a particularly complex set of circumstances. To begin with, her previous history as an outspoken critic of WITSEC's policies has earned her a number of enemies within the program itself. In addition, her belated efforts to halt the execution of an innocent man -- a man she helped convict -- make her the target of a vicious killer with an undisclosed agenda of his own. Throughout all this, the initial threat that drove her into hiding remains in force, looming relentlessly over the narrative.

The Program recounts, with considerable authority, one woman's struggle to make her way through this minefield of possibilities to a place of potential safety. Along the way, she finds a number of unexpected allies, including Alan Gregory, her program-appointed therapist; Lauren Crowder, Alan's very pregnant wife; and Carl Luppo, a retired Mafia hit man who takes Kirsten under his wing and saves her life on more than one occasion. White handles these various elements with an easy, understated mastery and treats his heroine's dilemma with intelligence, humor, and sympathy. The result is an incisive, psychologically acute thriller that successfully illuminates a little-known corner of the criminal justice system. It clearly represents a large step forward for a gifted, underrated writer.

--Bill Sheehan

Bill Sheehan reviews horror, suspense, and science fiction for Cemetery Dance, The New York Review of Science Fiction, and other publications. His book-length critical study of the fiction of Peter Straub, At the Foot of the Story Tree, has recently been published by Subterranean Press .

FROM THE PUBLISHER

When New Orleans District Attorney Kirsten Lord and her nine-year-old daughter are imperiled by a chillingly believeable death threat, Lord has no other choice but to accept the Witness Portection Program's offer to hide them in Boulder, Colorado. There, they meet program beteran Carl Luppo, a solitary mob hit man who is tormented by his former life and has nothing but time for regret. Sensing that Lord and her daughter's safety has been compromised, Luppo takes on the role of sentinel, fully realizing this might be his last shot at redemption. While Lord suspects that Luppo's warnings about the program's dark side are for her own protection and that she should believe the former assasssin's instincts, the only person she can really trust is nine years old.

FROM THE CRITICS

Publishers Weekly

Once it recovers from a wobbly beginning, this ninth thriller in the bestselling series featuring Boulder, Colo., clinical psychologist Alan Gregory sprints competently along. Peyton Francis, aka Kirsten Lord, was once a New Orleans district attorney. Now she and her nine-year-old daughter are enrolled in the witness protection program, in hiding from Peyton's husband's assassin, who was most likely hired by a Colombian drug lord Peyton put away for life. Given a new ID and moved to Boulder, Peyton is befriended by another witness protection participant, a former mob hitman who, like herself, is referred by the Feds to Dr. Gregory for counseling. Plagued by doubts about the federal marshal entrusted with her safety and tortured by second thoughts about the impending execution of a black man she may have mistakenly sent to death row in Florida, Peyton races against time to stay the Florida execution, and is forced to go into hiding from the very witness protection forces assigned to protect her. The usually sure-handed White is guilty of some artless writing at the novel's start, creating a veritable obstacle course of meandering points of view, including an obscure long-running metaphoric thread linking repressed memories to images of a pod of whales. However, once the narrative drive settles mainly into Peyton's first-person voice, the story comes handily together. Featuring an interesting cast, including a young Texas schoolmarm turned professional hit person, a sinister cabal of federal marshals with hidden agendas and an entrepreneurial assassination broker in Atlanta, the narrative drives to an edge-of-your-seat denouement. Author tour. (Apr.) Forecast: This is not White's best effort, but fans of the series will check in to catch up on Alan Gregory's adventures his wife is pregnant with their first child in this installment. Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.

Library Journal

After the murder of her husband, Kirsten Lord, a New Orleans district attorney and her nine-year-old daughter are sent into the U.S. Marshal's Witness Security Program (WITSEC) when a local drug dealer and rapist she prosecuted threatens them. She is relocated to Colorado, where she meets with Alex Gregory (White's psychologist hero) because he has been contracted by WITSEC to interview and monitor those in the group. Kirsten's position is tenuous: prior to the events that drove her into the program she was a critic of it, so she receives threats as a result. Another concern involves her best friend, a prosecutor she worked with to convict a man years before who is now scheduled to be executed, but because of new information, they are no longer certain he committed the crime. White's ability to create drama, suspense, and weave plots together in a thrilling d nouement, as well as develop a fine cast, makes this a real treat. Sandra Burr's voice inflections for the various characters add to the entertainment. A good choice for audio collections. Steven J. Mayover, formerly with Free Lib. of Philadelphia Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.

AudioFile

This thriller's strengths are its suspenseful beginning and exciting finale. In between, it takes Sandra Burr's solid reading to hold the listener's interest. It starts when D.A. Kirsten Lord witnesses the murder of her husband. She and her daughter enter the federal Witness Protection program to elude the killer. In the program, she encounters Karl Lupo, a "wise guy" also in hiding. Lupo becomes her protector. Though White's development of the pair's relationship is superficial and overly talky, Burr compensates with a sharp reading and winsome voice until the real action starts and the assassins are undone. Her only flaw is an unintentionally comic portrayal of a Cuban thug. A.L.H. © AudioFile 2001, Portland, Maine

Internet Book Watch

Sentenced drug dealer Ernesto Castro warns New Orleans Assistant District Attorney Kirstin Lord that for every thing he loses, she will lose twice. A few weeks later, Kirstin goes to meet her spouse Robert at the Galatoire restaurant, but sees the hitman wearing the Saints cap assassinate her husband. Though grieving her loss, Kirstin realizes that Castro said "twice" and worries that her eight-year old daughter Amy will be next.Ironically, Kirstin, a vocal critic of the witness protection program hiding killers from justice, enters the Federal witness security program. She becomes Peyton Francis and Amy becomes Landon, and they relocate to Boulder. Needing psychological help to cope with the upheaval and tragedies of her life she begins to see Dr. Alan Gregory, whose other WITSEC patient is former hitman Carl Luppo, a killer of at least 15-20 people. Carl realizes that something is not right with Peyton's disguise and takes the two females under his personal protection whether it is from Castro or someone more sinister. The Program is an exciting thriller that provides an insightful look into the pros and cons of the witness protection program. Kirstin and Carl are intriguing characters hiding for different reasons. The return of Dr. Gregory is always a reason to rejoice, but in all honesty his role is a secondary catalyst to the fast-paced main plot starring Kirstin. Still, he plays a pivotal role and his sessions with his two patients seem very real, making the story line feel genuine. Best-selling author Stephen White may have written his best novel to date with this tremendous taut tale.

Kirkus Reviews

Boulder psychologist Alan Gregory's latest case shunts him into a supporting role in this tale of a woman's misadventures in WITSEC, the US Marshals' fabled Witness Security Program. Strictly speaking, New Orleans prosecutor Kirsten Lord shouldn't even be in the program, since the only thing she witnessed was the assassination of her husband shortly after Ernesto Castro, the local drug boss she'd just convicted, told her,"Every precious thing I lose, you will lose two"—and even then, she couldn't identify the killer who'd taken the trouble to schedule the hit right before her eyes. Convinced that her daughter is Castro's logical next target, she appeals for help after her do-it-yourself cover upstate is broken to WITSEC, a program she'd formerly and very publicly criticized. The reluctant marshals spirit her off to Boulder, where she settles into a new life as apprentice chef Peyton Francis and joins retired mob enforcer Carl Luppo, a far more typical WITSEC client, as Alan Gregory's patient. One thing leads to another, especially when the kindly, alert Carl is doing the leading, and soon the two patients are secretly sharing information about themselves their minder, Inspector Ronald Kriciak, would really rather they didn't. Unfortunately, Carl isn't the only person Peyton is sharing with, and her ill-advised communications with Andrea Archer, an old friend in Florida's Sarasota County D.A.'s office, drags her back into an ancient crime Andrea is convinced the wrong man is about be executed for—unless Peyton can do something about it. Even more unfortunately, White, normally the consummate professional (Cold Case,2000,etc.), manages to blow this foolproof setup byplanting more unrelated bad guys in the bushes than you'd find in a year's worth of True Detective. It's lucky that Alan Gregory is still around for a key scene at the end. Rising tension undermined by wild coincidence.

WHAT PEOPLE ARE SAYING

A page-turner and a sharp, compelling portrait of a woman and daughter in crisis.  — (Iris Johansen, bestselling author of And Then You Die)

A prime-time thriller packed thick with sharp psychological twists and sinister plot turns...not to be missed.  — (Lorenzo Carcaterra, bestselling author of Sleepers)