Published by
Quercus,
25 April 2024.
ISBN: 978-1-52943-980-9 (HB)
Some crime novels are pure
entertainment, if matters of life and death can be described in that way.
Others make use of the life and death to explore other issues as well, and
that’s what Jo Spain’s latest standalone sets out to do.
From
the title, you could be forgiven for expecting a legal thriller, and the
opening chapter does nothing to contradict that. A young man, Theo, leaves his
girlfriend Dani asleep in her college room in the small hours of the morning,
and heads out on a mission which is clearly of the utmost importance to him.
Fast
forward nine years, and there’s the first suggestion that the trial in question
is actually a different kind. A patient dies on a geriatric ward, and an
observant nurse notices something on his records. She reports it, and a month
later her body is retrieved from a canal after a car accident.
A
year later still, Dani, the girlfriend in the first chapter, has returned to
the college as a lecturer – and it soon becomes plain that she is not quite as
she seems. Two mysteries start to unfold. Theo hasn’t been seen since his
disappearance ten years earlier, and it seems only Dani is concerned; and the
nurse’s ‘accidental’ death might be anything but. And the trial of the title is
a long way from the legal kind.
Given
Jo Spain’s previous life in politics and journalism, it’s unsurprising that
what follows sounds pretty convincing as it delves into murky ethical
territory. She does it through the medium of scratch-me-and-I-bleed characters,
some unequivocally on the angels’ or devil’s side, some who leave the reader
unsure what to believe about them. The locations, too, spring off the page: the
venerable older college buildings, the shiny new science block, an upmarket
bar, a village in France Dani visits, all come to life.
Spain
explores the kind of topic which makes the news and does it with a sure hand on
the tiller and a keen eye for what can go wrong. Alzheimer’s, the
pharmaceutical industry, funding for education, care for the elderly all come
under scrutiny, with the twin mysteries of Theo and the nurse woven into a
complex fabric.
Some
mystery novels, the best kind in my opinion, raise important questions, examine
important issues, and make us wonder exactly what does go on behind closed
doors. This is one – and as it does all those things, it succeeds in being a
meaty page-turner.
------
Reviewer: Lynne Patrick
Jo Spain is vice-chair of business body InterTrade Ireland and
a parliamentary assistant in Leinster House. Her first novel With our Blessing was published by
Quercus, London and was one of seven books shortlisted in the Richard and Judy
search for a bestseller competition 2014. The book is based on the
investigations of a Dublin-based detective team led by Tom Reynolds. It was
launched in Ireland in September 2015 and became a top-ten bestseller that
month. The rights have been snapped up in Germany. Since the she has published
ten further books. Jo lives in Dublin with her husband and their four young
children.
Lynne Patrick has been a
writer ever since she could pick up a pen, and has enjoyed success with short
stories, reviews and feature journalism, but never, alas, with a novel. She
crossed to the dark side to become a publisher for a few years and is proud to
have launched several careers which are now burgeoning. She lives in
Oxfordshire in a house groaning with books, about half of them crime fiction.
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