FORGOTTEN BOOK: WITNESS TO MYSELF

Witness to Myself by Seymour Shubin  (2006)

Alan Benning was a sexually repressed and confused 15-year-old when he happened to run across 13-year-old Shusheela Kapasi while jogging along a beach and woods on Cape Cod.  The girl, young for her age and seemingly mute, had her kit lodge in a branch high above her.  Alan scaled the tree and retreived the kite for her.  Still she said nothing, but only looked him.  On an impulse, he touched her crotch, then slid his hand inside her shorts.  Then she screamed and fought.  Horrified by what he had done and scared of the consequences, he tried to quiet her, but she fell from him and hit her had, and lay on the ground, unmoving.  Alan ran away, afraid that he had killed her.  The guilt and the fear and the uncertainity has haunted him for fifteen years.

Now thirty and a successful lawyer and slated to become the director of a large non-profit charity, Alan's personal life choices have been restricted by the memory of this incident  Recently he has entered into his first longterm relation.  Anna Presiac is an overweaningly insecure LPN who appears to be carryoing as much psychic baggage as Alan, but Alan realizes that he is in love with her.  Anna's need for Alan is evident; she may even love him as much as she claims.  Alan is afraid to take the relationship further because he fears he might be a murderer.  Added to this fear are a few vilent encounters nin Alan's past and his historyt of cruelty when he was a youth.  With a stiff resolve, Alan determines to find out what really happened that Cape Cod day fifteen years ago.

He travels to the smal town where the incident took place.  At the local library he begins to examine the local papers from that time.  His fears are realized.  The girl was dead.  Her body had been found by her father.  For the first time in fifteen years, Alan now has a name for his victim.  The local reports had the girl savagely murdered by a sex maniac.  The case had been kept before the public, in part, because of the efforts of Mack McKinney, a John Walsh-type character whose own daughter had been murdered and who has devoted his life to hunting down child murderers.  McKinney has taken a special interest in the Susheela Kapasi case and has vowed never to give up unitl her murderer is caught.  Alan's interest in the local papers of the time caught the interest of the town's librarian, who notified officials.  A rough police artist sketch of Alan begins to circulate nationawide because of McKinney's interest.

Meanbwhile, Alan's older cousin, who served as Alan's big brother during their youth, is a true crime reporter, with many magazine articles and several books to his credit.  His last book did not sell that well, and he is looking for something spectacular for his next book.  Meanwhile, in Pennsyvania an unsuspected pedophile named Harold Luder was arrested for the brutal murder of a young girl.  Luder confessed to that murder, while admitting to many others,  In at least three of the cases already, police were led to where Luder had disposed of his victims.   Many more of Luder's claims of butchery had yet to be proven; some were suspected of being false confessions.  Eventually, Luder said that he had murdered Susheela Kapasi.  Had Luder really come across the unconscious girl after Alan had fled the scene?  Or was Luder just blowing smoke?  What actually happened fifteen years ago?

Witness to Myself is a well-written, extremely claustrophobic novel of guilt and uncertainty.  Combining noir with modern Greek tragedy with hints of Hitchcock and Cornell Woolrich, Shubin has presented us with a powerful tale that is impossible to put down.

Seymour Shubin (1921-2014) was the author of fifteen books.  His first novel, Anyone's My Name (1953) was a critcally acclaimed bestseller that is still being used in university criminology classes.  The Captain  (1982) was nominated for an Edgar Award.  Many of his novels cover social issues such as police corruption, ederly abuse, the death penalty, and corruption in the pharmaseutical industry.  He has been quoted as saying, "I want the books to say something -- without saying it out loud."