Lisa Scottoline’s What Happened to the Bennets is a story about the Bennett family that goes into the witness protection program. The family is travelling home from their daughter’s school sports game when they witness a horrible crime. Witness protection is usually for criminals who are testifying against other criminals, but the Bennetts are just a family who witnessed a crime. The FBI believes their lives are in danger and in the middle of the night they are pulled from their home and whisked away. When you are in witness protection you cannot contact anyone from your old live. However, the husband has his own court reporter business, the wife has a photography business, an elderly mom / grandmother is in a nursing home, the kids friends are ghosted, and so on. At some point, due to their disappearance, people even start to think that the Bennetts may have been behind the crime they witnessed. Eventually the father / husband notices some odd coincidences and other things that don’t add up. From that point, the book goes into high gear as he tries to learn the truth about what happened.
I am a big fan of Lisa Scottoline, so I was a bit surprised that in the beginning of the book the explanation of how the family got into witness protection seemed rushed and not well described. Characters were well developed and the descriptions of being in witness protection seemed realistic, as did the ways they came to realize that something was off. The second part of the story moves at a very fast pace and felt like it was written for television. Some of the events were too convenient. Still, if you are willing to suspend judgement and flow with the story then it was enjoyable.