What Do You Know about The Witness? Quiz

Answer: Bickford

Bickford is a fictional small town in the Ozark Mountains in Arkansas. It is close-knit community, and many of the locals are artists of one kind or another. Many of them were hippies who drifted into Bickford in the '60s and '70s, found it to their liking, and settled there.

Answer: Elizabeth Fitch

Elizabeth Fitch is the daughter of a cold, controlling single mother who had herself artificially inseminated so that she could shape her offspring into a person like herself. At 16, Elizabeth rebelled, and ran away. The opening chapters of the book tell the story of what happened next, and also gives the book its title, 'The Witness'.

Answer: His mother was a big fan of baseball player Brooks Robinson.

Sunny was a great fan of the Baltimore Orioles, and in particular of the Orioles' third baseman Brooks Robinson. When Robinson won the Most Valuable Player award in the 1970 World Series against the Cincinnati Reds, she vowed that if she ever had a son, she would name him for her hero.

Answer: Police Chief

Brooks is the Police Chief of the small Bickford Police Department. His entire staff consists of two deputies, Boyd and Ash, and the dispatcher, Alma. After ten years with the Little Rock Police Department, five of them as a robbery/homicide detective, he finds the slower pace of Bickford restful.

Brooks' father Loren is the high school math teacher, Reverend Goode is the pastor of the Baptist Church, and the Mayor of Bickford is not mentioned by name, but Brooks' best friend Russ doesn't think very highly of his worship and is planning to run for the mayor's office in the next civic election.

Answer: Run for mayor

Russ Conroy has been Brooks' best friend since they were kids and he is planning to run for Mayor of Bickford.

He's not about to divorce his wife Seline, a teacher, because he's devoted to her and their toddler daughter Cee-Cee. He does not now have, nor has he ever had, a band, and it is unlikely he'd open an art gallery, being far too busy managing the family-owned hotel Inn of the Ozarks.

Answer: The Mural House

Brooks' mother Sunny is a gifted artist and uses her house as a canvas, painting murals on the outer walls, changing them when she tires of them. The locals never know what she's going to paint there next.

Abigail bought the old Skeeter place, a house just outside the town, where she lives in seclusion. In a town full of former hippies, it's unlikely that anyone would call the Gleason domicile 'that hippie house', and Gleason's Folly wouldn't fit, either.

Answer: She owns her own computer programming/software design company.

Abigail is nothing short of a genius. We discover, as her story is told, that she attended Harvard Medical School in her teens, and had been a computer geek all her life. While still in her late teens/early twenties she created three online games, which she sold to a production company for a very healthy sum, and now runs her own company, designing high-end security systems for corporate clients.

Her limited social skills preclude the very idea of a lover of any kind, especially one worth blackmailing, and she never met her father (a sperm donor) although, using her computer skills, she had tracked him down and knew who he was, and she has no trust fund.

Answer: Mick and Hilly Conroy

Inn of the Ozarks was established by Russ Conroy's grandfather, and is now owned by his parents Mick and Hilly. However, they leave the day-to-day management of the hotel to Russ.

Loren and Sunny Gleason are Brooks' parents. Tybal and Missy Crew are former classmates of Russ' and Brooks', and Lincoln Blake is the wealthiest man in Bickford with a severe case of arrogance, and a ne'er-do-well son named Justin, who is as arrogant as his father. Ginny is the long-suffering wife and mother of this despicable pair.

Answer: Catherine Kingston

Abigail, in her twelve years on the run from the Russian Mafia, has a wealth of false identities which she has created, and she uses that of Catherine Kingston when she and Brooks go to meet with the FBI agents so that Abigail can put her past behind her and stop running.

Caliope Slope is the daughter of police dispatcher Alma Slope, Sylbie MacKenna is Brooks' high school sweetheart who would be perfectly willing to resume their erstwhile relationship, and Mojean Parsins is the mother of Doyle Parsins, one of Justin Blake's cronies and partners-in-mayhem.

Answer: His father had a heart attack.

When his father Loren had a heart attack, Brooks quit the Little Rock Police Department to move back home to be there for his parents when they needed him. The job of Police Chief was open, and he took it. Loren recovered and is back teaching, but Brooks realized that he was happy in Bickford, and stayed on.

Brooks was never married, and he was never unemployed, but he has come to realize that he missed Bickford and being near his close and loving family.

Answer: He is a private investigator.

Roland Babbett is a former policeman who now works as a private investigator for a major firm in Little Rock. The firm has been retained by Lincoln Blake to dig into Abigail's background so that Blake can coerce her into getting Brooks to drop the charges against Justin. Neither Abigail nor Brooks will play along. Brooks finds out that Babbett is not a photographer, as he claims, catches him red-handed in the act of breaking into the hotel suite that Justin Blake and his buddies had trashed, and makes Babbett realize that it is in his best interests to file a report indicating that there is nothing to find on Abigail.

Answer: Alma Slope

Alma Slope is a colourful character who "admitted to sixty, but as she'd admitted to sixty before Brooks left for Little Rock, he couldn't begin to guess the real age of his dispatcher". She is given to wearing bright colours, dying her hair, and knows the life stories of every resident of Bickford. Her daughter Caliope is the town's resident psychic.

Jill Harris is Tybal and Missy Crew's neighbour, Mya and Sybill are Brooks' sisters.

Answer: Judge Stan Reingold

Stan Reingold, Lincoln Blake's golfing buddy, is the judge who presides at Justin Blake's bail hearing, and much to the surprise of the townspeople, he throws the book at Justin and his cronies, going so far as to confiscate their passports. When Lincoln Blake starts throwing his weight around in the courtroom, Reingold fines him $500.00 for contempt of court. Brooks figures that in the past Reingold had let Justin slide once too often, and is now making up for it.

Grover isn't a judge. He owns a ceramics shop. Clint Parsins is the father of Doyle Parsins, one of Justin Blake's cronies, and Lindy runs the diner which Brooks frequents.

Answer: Kill Brooks Gleason

Lincoln Blake is willing to pay Tybal $5000.00 to kill Brooks. Even though he knows that Tybal is going to A.A. meetings and has been sober for 60 days or more, Blake plays on Ty's weakness and plies him with whiskey. Blake gives Ty half the money, and Ty will get the rest when the deed is done.

When Ty goes home for his gun, he realizes that he has been conned, and goes to Lindy, his A.A sponsor. Lindy takes Ty to Brooks, and Tybal tells Brooks about the plot. Blake is arrested for soliciting the murder of a police officer.

Answer: Creating a new recipe for potatoes

Abigail enjoys creating new recipes - she equates cooking to science - and is concocting a recipe for oven-roasted potatoes when Brooks surprises her - and himself - with a proposal of marriage. While Brooks often accompanies her when she walks her mastiff Bert, and she maintains her marksmanship skills with target practice in her back yard, it is extremely unlikely that reclusive Abigail would ever have thought of planning a party.