Carole Tyrrell worked in the theatre for nearly 10 years and was always fascinating by the way death and the supernatural formed many of the greatest and most enduring works. She has read crime fiction for many years and enjoys the broad range of the genre.
Neve Harper is preparing for the case that could change her life.
After fifteen years as a barrister, she will become a Queen’s Counsel which will open doors for her. Neve is appearing for the defence of Wade Darling, a man accused of murdering his entire family while they slept, setting the family home on fire and then trying to kill himself. But he claims that he’s innocent and that a mysterious intruder is responsible for it all.
Neve has inherited the case from Adrian Whittaker QC who committed suicide by jumping under a tube train. But she soon finds that evidence is missing from the case file and the trial has already been delayed several times.
But she is a woman with a secret. Neve, her teenage stepdaughter Hannah, and her mother in law, Maggie, are preparing to hold a vigil to mark the third anniversary of the disappearance of Neve’s husband, Mark. He went out for a run on Christmas Eve and never returned. Mark Harper’s vanishing has fascinated true crime fans who have their own theories about what may have happened to him. One journalist in particular, Melanie Eccleston, is convinced that Neve knows more than she’s saying and claims to have the evidence to prove it.
They are the closest approximation to a family that Neve has ever had even though Maggie seems keen to break all ties with her. All Neve has ever known is foster homes and being moved on whenever her sleepwalking became too much of a problem.
But she’s busy preparing for the pre-trial and the trial itself. But someone else knows her secret and in a nasty encounter on a tube train they leave her in no doubt what they want. Yolanda Darling, Wade’s wife, was part of the powerful Viklund family who are criminals, and her father wants Wade to be found guilty at all costs.
Neve is talented and ambitious and determined to protect those closest to her and at its heart the novel is about morals. Conviction was a really gripping book with more twists and turns than a rollercoaster. The author was constantly pulling the rug out from under my feet right up until the last page and it had one of the best cliffhanger endings I’ve read in a long while.
