Gwen Moffat lives in Cumbria. Her novels are set in remote communities ranging from the Hebrides to the American West. The crimes fit their environment, swelling that dreadful record of sin in the smiling countryside cited by Sherlock Holmes.
The hungry Judges soon the sentence sign,
And wretches hang that jury-men may dine.
Alexander Pope.
The book starts so. Another miscarriage of justice then. Another doomed victim, the fight for truth here taken up by Tony Quirke, the one dissenting member of a jury that found Conrad Connor guilty of the murder of his flatmate. Motivation was said to be that Connor was jealous of the other’s success as an artist but, aside from the mediocre quality of the paintings, all the evidence was circumstantial.
Quirke’s argument was not that Connor was innocent but that he had not been found guilty of the crime; he had been convicted on prejudice and trickery. He had made a poor showing in court and the prosecutor was an ambitious woman out for a kill. The judge was scathing in her summing up: this was a wretch “evil beyond imagination” and she sentenced him to life with a minimum of thirty years.
Connor never made it; he hanged himself in the holding cell.
His posthumous champion, Quirke, is an ordinary man who likes his beer and rugby football: an easy-going chap not greatly concerned that his marriage is breaking up, he is nevertheless possessed of a fierce sense of fair play that comes raging to the surface in the jury room where he fails to convince the domineering foreman and ten others that all facts can be falsified and evidence planted.
His disgust at the verdict is patent, a sense of impotence compounded when he receives word that his wife is about to sue him for a financial settlement that would involve both his house and his pension. In desperate need of money to employ his own solicitor, he persuades a Hollywood script writer to collaborate on a book: a best seller that will not only clear Connor’s name, but discover the real killer.
Now fired by exigency rather than altruism Quirke plunges into an investigation bristling with hazards and a plot takes wing. Action becomes fast and colourful and even the writing hardens as if the author, reined in until now, has started to enjoy himself with gang warfare and enforcers, gun fights and real guns. Boreham is good on guns.
This novel falls between stools: part polemic, part thriller with its mandatory violence. But violence was intrinsic from the start in its gut-wrenching theme. Nick Boreham has served on a jury in a case of homicide; he knows what he’s about but he gets lost in a plot where alarming twists go far beyond coincidence and descend to farce. Jurymen May Dine is a weak link in a worthy cause but, despite its flaws. the sincerity shines through, encapsulated in its own sly and topical title.
Plus ça change.
