THE PROGRAM

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 by planting 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.