PROOF POSITIVE by Phillip Margolin

Finished We 5/13/2020

This is one of my paperbacks that I bought at the library book sale on Sa 1/11/20.

Essentially the book is about a sociopath, Bernie Cashman, who happens to be a respected criminologist who works for the District Attorney's office in Portland, Oregon. He changes the results of a couple of cases because he believes that unless he acts, guilty people will go free. In a strange turn of events he is forced to commit murders to cover-up his meddling.  The novel is about how this plays out.

The book is part of the author's 'Amanda Jaffe Series'. Amanda Jaffe is a defense lawyer who works with her father, Frank Jaffe. The books are set in and around Portland, Oregon.

An interesting premise and the novel is very engaging.

 From the book's page at Amazon:

"Defense attorney Doug Weaver believes his client, Jacob Cohen, is innocent—but the forensic evidence proves beyond the shadow of a doubt that the meek, mentally ill homeless man killed and dismembered a woman . . .

Hired to defend gangster Art Prochaska against charges that he murdered an informer, lawyer Amanda Jaffe and her father, Frank, have their work cut out for them—because, as improbable as it seems, the forensic clues scream that Prochaska is guilty . . .

And now people are dying inexplicably—as Amanda and Doug join forces to find answers hidden somewhere in the darkest corners of crime scene investigation, where a god-playing madman holds the lethal power to alter the truth."

From Kirkus reviews:

"n her third appearance, Oregon defense attorney Amanda Jaffe (Ties That Bind, 2003, etc.) takes on a CSI tech who thinks he’s God.

Bernie Cashman, forensic expert at the Oregon state crime lab, loves his job, and he’s terrific at it. The trouble is that he’s nuts. He thinks it’s perfectly fine to fake whatever evidence is necessary to send the folks he’s decided are guilty to the slammer. Anything less would be a shirking of his professional responsibility. He’s been acting like God for years as the occasion warrants, pleased as punch with the results, until his colleague Mary Clark semi-accidentally catches him at it. It’s a discomfiting development that leaves Cashman with a moment of clarity: The woman has to be murdered. All his splendid work in support of Oregon law enforcement hangs in the balance. It turns out that murdering Mary entails framing another kind of nutcase—poor, unbalanced, homeless Jacob Cohen, custom-made for a role as scapegoat. But once Amanda puts in an appearance on Jacob’s behalf, Cashman’s brought to book by means of a little bit of luck wrapped around a modicum of human folly.

Margolin is never going to be a poster boy for stylish prose, but this is a briskly paced, cleverly plotted, long-overdue switch on all those heroic forensics guys."