43 Dead, 24 injured. Two bombs devastate a London Theatre.
The Seven are the survivors of the gang that took the audience hostage during the celebration of a famous actress, before detonating two bombs.
The Seven are on trial at the Old Bailey, in what should be a slam dunk guilty verdict case.
Eve Wren, a young Solicitor is now working for the CPS and is trying to keep a low profile. She had been touted as one of the brightest defence solicitors in the country, until she spotted a mistake by a senior Barrister at the midland law firm she worked at. Her reward for pointing it out was to have the blame turned on her, which led to her firing.
She is young, she is diligent and she is very good at her job. Good enough to have been noticed by her new boss. Good enough to be pulled of a case she is working on to help the prosecution team in the trial of the seven. But the case has already begun, so why move her now.
The credibility of a member of the investigating team has been brought into doubt following mistakes in another case.
They had been responsible for logging evidence.
Some evidence in trials is never used. It’s things that were discovered during an investigation but are deemed irrelevant to the case, and therefore undisclosed to the defence.
Wrens job is to go over the evidence deemed irrelevant, just in case there is something there that should have been disclosed.
As you would imagined the Police Officers who investigated the incident are not happy. But the SIO and his boss have to accept that Wren needs to do her job.
The political wranglings of who Wren should inform of any discoveries first, the lead Barrister or the Police, as well as the moral dilemma of what she should do if she discovers evidence that may conflict the case are central to the plot.
I really enjoyed this book. At first I did have a problem with the now-and-then plot, switching between the night of the incident and the time of the trial. I thought some of the “then” sections were spurious, but actually the knitted the plot together nicely.
Book two in the series The Bait is also available and is now on my TBR list.
Pages: 364. Publisher Thomas & Mercer. Audiobook length: 10.36. Narrator: Moira Quirk
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