Trial by jury — and a serial killer
THIRTEEN by Steve Cavanagh (Orion £7.99) THIS dazzling serial killer thriller set in Manhattan is written by a Dublin-based civil rights lawyer. One of the most accomplished legal dramas I have read this year, it reminds me of Scott Turow’s stunning Presumed Innocent.
The premise is simple. Former con man, now lawyer, Eddie Flynn is recruited to defend Hollywood A-list actor Robert Solomon, who’s accused of brutally killing his beautiful actress wife. All the evidence points to his guilt, and it’s set to be the celebrity trial of the century — think O. J. Simpson.
Enter the first of many intriguing twists: a ruthless serial killer is quietly ensuring he is on the jury . . . The plan doesn’t work at first, as he only becomes the 13th juror — the alternate.
The trial itself reveals Cavanagh’s astonishingly sure touch for character and the skill of his serpentine plotting. A BRUSH WITH DEATH Ali Carter (Point Blank £8.99)
A DELICIOUS new voice in crime writing is revealed in this debut. Carter’s heroine is the engaging and spirited Susie Mahl, who paints pets for aristocratic toffs to help make a living as an artist. This means she regularly stays in grand country houses.
On one such weekend, Alexander, the ninth Earl of Greengrass, dies unexpectedly behind the local church in the English village of Spire in Dorset. Susie stays on to help look after the Earl’s grieving, but matriarchal, widow, Diana.
With her eye for detail and her curious nature, Susie scents the possibility of a murder, and turns herself into an amateur sleuth who Miss Marple would admire. Excellent on the English aristocracy, and written in a fine wry style, we will hear much more of Miss Mahl.
THE CHOSEN ONES by Howard Linskey (Michael Joseph £7.99) SOME of Linskey’s stories, set in the North-East, feature the irascible detective DS Ian Bradshaw as well as journalists Tom Carney and Helen Norton.
This latest brings the three together again to investigate the possibility that young women are being abducted
and kept prisoner somewhere in Durham. It begins when Eva Dunbar wakes up trapped in a large metal box that is just big enough for a single bed.
She has no idea how she got there, nor who might have taken her. But is she simply the latest in a line of victims who have disappeared?
Are they alive, have they been kept captive, or are they all dead? Bradshaw has no leads, until a body of a woman who disappeared 18 years earlier and may have been held a prisoner is discovered. This story will cause nightmares, it is that good.