This book follows one called Trial Junkies which I had not read. To begin with we see a young adult called Jamal who is reduced to mugging people with his father's gun after losing his job. He's not sorry for the wealthy people he robs. But a well-off girl he knows is staggering through a parking lot one night, dressed up and weeping, seemingly out of her mind on something. Jamal decides to take her home safely, but before they get far, a police car draws up and the officers jump to the wrong conclusion.

NEGLIGENCE then turns to a courtroom story. Jamal is on trial and has been vilified. Ethan Hutchinson, known as Hutch, has left a film career and replaced addictions with obsessing over cases and procedures, learning how the justice system works. Through subterfuge he manages to talk to Jamal in a hospital, and the young man tells him that the girl, Kelly was with him and safe, but someone hit him and next morning Kelly was found dead. He blames the police. Hutch has promised to share this with an online news programme, so he tells the story to reporter friend Matt.

Matt is not impressed with Jamal's defence lawyer, especially after he calls his client a little punk in a discussion. The well-off neighbourhood where Kelly's family lives is a good contrast, and her expensive school, Eccelstone Academy, has lost another young lady of late, a girl who died in her own bedroom. Some months previously another girl from the school had her death recorded.... Matt starts to wonder if there's a connection. When Matt is attacked, Hutch has to take over the story.

There is a lot of looking back at the story from the first book and someone who had read it might enjoy this aspect more. Journalists are seen as just digging up sensationalist stories and saleable scandals, so many people have no wish to speak with them. Quite amusingly Hutch's uninspiring TV career has gained him some unwanted fans; one woman declares herself in love with him. Hutch recalls that he hated the boredom and loneliness of school, but today he doesn't seem to have much of a work or social life either. Robert Gregory Browne doesn't try too hard to give the laconic Hutch a personality, but his friend can rely on him. NEGLIGENCE started slowly but warmed up after a while and became a readable thriller with very human characters.

Book Summary

DEAD GIRLS TELL NO TALES

She was found with a bullet in her head, and the kid she was last seen with woke up drugged and disoriented in a neighbor's back yard. Now the kid is awaiting trial for her murder, and reporter Matt Isaacs is convinced that there's more here than meets the eye.

Matt's old college pal, Ethan "Hutch" Hutchinson--washed-up actor and newly-minted trial junkie--isn't so sure... until a violent attack propels Hutch and his friends into the middle of a conspiracy that takes them all the way from the courthouse gallery to the not so hallowed halls of an exclusive Chicago prep school... straight into the hands of a killer.