Present Tense

Criminal lawyer Robbie Munro is living at home again, with his widowed dad and the five-year-old daughter he’s recently found out about. His professional life isn’t going too well, and neither is his love life. He’s been banned from taking clients on Scottish Legal Aid, which is most of them, and to further complicate things one of his more dubious clients’ shows up one day with a box he asks to leave with Robbie. The client gives Robbie a tempting amount of money for this favour, but he also forbids Robbie from opening the box……

This novel best comes under the category of ‘comic crime’, and it does have some genuinely hilarious moments. Most of them are centred upon the fact that Robbie’s junior lawyer Joanna clearly has it bad for him, and he remains utterly clueless to this fact, despite all the big clues Joanna keeps dropping.

As the seventh book in a clearly established series, there’s a lot of back story with the characters that the first-time reader risks missing out on [but most of the significant points are explained]. The most important event in Robbie’s life is how he suddenly came to be a father to a five-year-old girl, but there is enough explanation given in this novel to satisfy the reader.

The fact that Robbie specialises in defending men accused of rape could give this novel a dark edge. But despite that it still manages to be humorous, and the author clearly knows his stuff when it comes to the Scottish legal system. This is an entertaining novel with enough of a mystery threaded through it to keep crime fans gripped, and characters well rounded enough to carry a series.