Read my short story collection featuring Victorian “lady detective” Meinir Davies now (in paperback, hardback, or on Kindle)! If you’re interested in reading my academic work about detective and crime fiction (free PDFs available), check it out here.
Review
Here we are, almost 30 years later, rejoining Nicola Williams’ barrister Leanne “Lee” Mitchell. I appreciate the work that Williams does to maintain her broader cast of characters from the first novel, Without Prejudice, rejoining them to pick up the threads of her first novel and recognising the long-term impacts of being a victim (or perpetrator, or even sometimes a bystander) of crime because, of course, that is the reality: when the investigation, trial, or story finishes, people’s lives go on.
Again, Williams is interested in the ethical difficulties that criminal lawyering poses, and the tag line focuses on this: ‘How do you defend the indefensible?’ The law demands a commitment to abstract principles over personal ties, and what is right is not always what is just. Although this is the primary concern, putting pressure on Lee’s romantic and community relations, I actually found Lee less interesting in this novel and was more interested in the community at large and how it functions as an organism, what causes its breakdown or (less apocalyptically) change.
For example, there’s a neat parallel between Hugo Cunningham the local councillor and Lee at the advice clinic, both of them keeping the regulars company and dealing with the same issues time and time again because their community has a peculiar (and not necessarily desirable) homeostasis. Theirs are acts akin to the immune system; they bat away recurring infections, knit together wounds, get things more or less working again but not necessarily fixed. This contrasts with a killer who thinks they want to take things into their own hands and can, through more radical action, make a real change.
The final twist was a little bit of a surprise. There was plenty of set-up for the killer to be another marginal character (or for them to be one and the same), and I think I would have found that more interesting as a resolution. It would have given the novel an opportunity to reflect on the challenging experiences of young people starting their professional careers in London and engage with the despair that many young people experience given the economic opportunities available (or not). Elsewhere the novel takes an interest in gentrification, so it felt like a bit of a missed opportunity.
See also
These lists capture other detective/crime stories and characters that I thought of as I was reading this piece. I won’t explain why, to avoid spoilers, but they’re associations and not ‘if you liked this, then you’ll love…’ recommendations!
- Without Prejudice (Nicola Williams)
- The Trial (Rob Rinder)
- Silk (TV series)
Read my short story collection featuring Victorian “lady detective” Meinir Davies now (in paperback, hardback, or on Kindle)!
Dominique Gracia 
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