Eric Ferguson's COLD RECORD

My review of my friend's crime novel

My friend Eric Ferguson’s courtroom drama and legal mystery Cold Record is being published this weekend. I thought I’d share here on my Substack my primary impressions of his novel.

The murder victim, 20-year-old Haylee Branch, hovers over the entire novel the same way she hovers over its cover. We feel connected with her in the memories shared of her at her best and in the ever-evolving glimpses into her final minutes of her life.

Some of these facts are discovered by the investigators. And Ferguson takes us into those investigations with the pitch-perfect voices of the detectives.

More of these facts are revealed to us in the courtroom, by witnesses on the stand, as they present them to the jury. Each witness is given just enough telling descriptive detail, along with his or her distinct voice, and so Ferguson brings each minor character in the novel alive for us.

And some of these facts emerge from the multiple stories provided by the defendant, Andrew Rodarte. We hear him interviewed twice, telling two stories. We hear him on the stand, surprising everyone in the courtroom, including his defense attorney, with a third.

Once Rodarte takes the stand, the fiercely determined prosecutor, Sonya Brandstetter, delivers a stellar cross-examination. Brandstetter’s is the hero of the novel. She’s driven with deep inner strength while also being highly ethical, and she carries a strong dose of compassion for the victims.

Throughout the book, Ferguson never lets us forget the suffering of the foremost living victim, Haylee Branch’s mother Marta. Through multiple meetings with prosecutors, Marta’s pain becomes our own.

The narrating character of most of the novel is John Patrick Howland, a Ferguson-like prosecutor assigned to sit at the courtroom table next to Brandstetter. But J.P., who’s quite content to be at the fringe of events, is suddenly thrust into the forefront, and we begin rooting for this second hero, with all of his subtle ambivalence, to rise to the occasion and deliver.

We experience what it’s like for attorneys to wait while the jury deliberates. And then we hear the verdict.

Case closed. The novel’s about to reach its resolution.

Well, not quite. Not hardly.

Years go by, and J.P. gets a letter from the imprisoned Rodarte that sends J.P. reeling. We get more and more information, but Ferguson leaves us in suspense about the contents of the letter — leaves us, his readers, reeling or at least mystified — for a staggering 24 pages. At last we hear for ourselves that Rodarte has a fourth story — which completely upends everything we thought we knew.

After J.P. has led a new investigation, he spends more time finding out what victim Marta Branch wants. And we wonder along with J.P. what justice requires.

In the second-to-last chapter — one of my favorite chapters, for some reason — J.P. goes back to the defense attorney, now retired, who absorbs what his client never told him and what he never suspected.

So after reading Cold Record more than once, what lingers with me now?

First, I suspect that Ferguson may have delivered the biggest post-trial surprise in the history of crime and legal fiction.

And second, I’m left with a troubling awareness of life’s tragic dimension.

How letting fear win out over courage can allow a wrenching event to unfold that mars many people’s lives.

How fear and guilt and conscience can cause someone to act in stunning ways.

And how my sense of justice and morality may encounter events that not only refuse to fit into a tidy box but that challenge my view of personal responsibility and even evoke my compassion for the guilty.