GUILT BY DEGREES

A homeless man is murdered on the streets of Los Angeles, when the prosecution of his alleged killer fails the dismissive attitude of the assigned lawyer angers deputy district attorney Rachel Knight. She takes up the case herself and discovers a link to the brutal murder of an LAPD officer along with a tangle of deceptions that puts her life at risk.

Marcia Clark’s second crime novel is an enjoyable legal thriller packed with action, sharp observations and wise cracking humour. Clarke is a former deputy district attorney and manages to handle the legal side of the novel convincingly without bogging her readers down in obscure points of law.

She is equally good on the backbiting internal politics of law enforcement, where sometimes it seems as much effort goes into fighting interdepartmental battles as into fighting the wider war on crime. The plot scoots along nicely, Clarke keeps her readers on their toes when it comes to who did the deed and, more importantly, why they did it.

Clarke’s first novel garnered praise from most of the big hitters currently at work in the crime genre and rave reviews from the press. Second novels are never easy, especially when the first has built up such a hurdle of expectation; the good news is that with Guilt by Degrees Marcia Clarke has jumped it like a champion athlete. She is well on the way to becoming one of the big hitters herself.