Blood from Stone: Amazon.co.uk: Frances Fyfield: Books

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Review
'Classic Fyfield, which is to say it's as good as it gets' Andrew Taylor, Spectator 'Her knowledge of the workings of the human mind - or more correctly the soul - is second to none.' Ian Rankin 'Undiluted brilliance.' The Times 'The best female crime writer in this country' Sunday Express

Guardian
`Fyfield is routinely and rightly praised for her elegant prose... What doesn't get mentioned so often is that when it comes to the dissection of the human spirit, she is the most brutal scalpel-wielder we have...one of Highsmith's true heirs'

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3.7 out of 5 stars (3 customer reviews)

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4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A worthy Gold Dagger winner, 1 Sep 2008

By	M. D. Smart (London, UK) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER) (REAL NAME)

This review is from: Blood from Stone (Paperback)

Although Frances Fyfield has written a surprisingly long list of crime novels during her career, I can only remember reading one of them (I think it was 'Let's Dance,' published under the pseudonym Frances Hegarty) before this one - and I seem to recall that I didn't enjoy it very much. So I was not sure what to expect when I picked up this, her latest thriller, despite it having recently won the 2008 Gold Dagger from the Crime Writers Association.

Happily, I discovered an enjoyable and engrossing tale, although it took a while to get into. Ms Fyfield has a very distinct, rather disjointed prose style which can be a little off-putting; I believe it to have been the reason I didn't enjoy the previous book of hers I read. However, once I became accustomed to the rhythm, the plot took hold and I read the whole thing straight through in a few hours. Briefly, it's the story of a ruthless female defence lawyer who has just won a difficult case by thoroughly humiliating the vulnerable chief witness for the prosecution. The witness kills herself after her second day under cross-examination, and shortly afterwards the barrister herself commits suicide, leaving behind some cryptic clues as to her reasons. Simultaneously, the unstable and dangerous man she successfully defended in her final case is looking for the incriminating notes and recordings she made of their consultations, her unscrupulous brother is out to get his hands of her estate and the sister of the dead witness cannot rest until she sees justice done... Needless to say, all these disparate threads become enmeshed as the story builds to a nerve-shredding final confrontation.

There was only one element which I felt let the book down. Throughout the novel, chapters are interspersed with extracts from the transcript of that final trial which takes place just before the book begins, detailing the female lawyer's damning cross-examination of the prosecution witness and her sister, and I found these sequences unconvincing. I fully realise that Frances Fyfield is a qualified barrister and therefore has a vast wealth of legal knowledge, while my only firsthand experience of court is a brief spell of jury service, but I simply cannot believe that anyone would be allowed to behave the way the defence lawyer does in these extracts. She hurls a stream of vicious personal insults at the witnesses, belittling their appearance, intelligence and career choices, and she completely dominates the judge to the point where she decides when he should call a recess! Yet there are few objections from the opposing counsel. I did watch a hostile cross-examination while on jury duty, but it was nothing like this. If lawyers really are allowed to insult and bully witnesses in such a way, then some new bar regulations are clearly needed.

Despite this quibble, I'd still say the book was a deserving winner at the CWA awards, and would definitely recommend it to any fan of intelligent, slow-burning psychological thrillers.

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2 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A new offering from a usually superb writer, 13 Jun 2008

By	A Common Reader "See all mybook reviews at ww... (Sussex, England) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)

I find Frances Fyfield the most satisfying of these writers, but I have to say that I found her latest novel, Blood From Stone, slightly disappointing. I suspect that its something to do with the lack of "bite" in this novel that lets it down. Frankly, its a little meandering, taking a very long time to build up, and then lacks the thrill that a thriller really depends on. I found myself counting the pages to the end, wondering when something really significant would happen. Somehow the book lacks suspense, its characters failing to grab my attention, and when a strong character does emerge, there was never quite enough of them for me to be able to relate to them.

The novel concerns the aftermath of an unpleasant court case, during which the prosecution lawyer has been particularly nasty to key female witnesses, causing one of them to take her own life. Later, the lawyer is also seen to commit suicide by a passing photographer, who sells his dramatic pictures to a newspaper. The book then takes the form of a gradual unravelling of the build-up to the case and its aftermath.

The novel is peppered with court transcripts from the trial and personally, I've never liked flashbacks, especially in this case where the flow of the book is interrupted by the stilted format of a court record.

The two villains of this piece Rick Boyd and Frank Shearer are a little too alike, and I found it easy to get them mixed up - both nasty pieces of work, but Rick's domination of Frank seemed a little unrealistic in view of Frank's innate nastiness which surely would have prevented him being so subordinate in the partnership? The main investigator is a lawyer's side-kick Peter Freil who is introduced to us a a bit of a loser, but later and rather unconvincingly transforms himself into a knight in shining armour. The reader gains a first impression of a character from the material presented, and it can be difficult when the character seems to transform during a novel without any visible process going on to initiate the change.

Having said all that, Fyfield is an excellent writer with many fine novels to her name. I find myself looking for deficiencies in my reading of the novel, but don't find it easy to discover any. I think on the whole, that this is just not one of her best, but her past form will still make me wait for the next one with some eagerness.

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3.0 out of 5 stars Not really worth it, 20 Jun 2009

By	H. Lacroix (France) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This review is from: Blood from Stone (Paperback)

The book starts on a good premise. A prominent and ruthless lawyer who has just got her latest client off commits suicide. What drove her to it? Is it the fact that the main witness in her latest case was so humiliated by her that she killed herself? Can such an uncompromising and cruelly efficient lawyer be moved to remorse? Hardly likely! It makes compulsive reading at first but unfortunately the book doesn't hold on its promise. It soon becomes predictable, sometimes ridiculous and the prose itself is hardly good quality. What's more, as another reader pointed at, it has that major flaw, mainly that the transcript from the case at the heart of the story shows a lawyer using such language to a witness that I feel sure that no judge could let her get away with it. It thereby destroys the book's credibility in a way that its simple structure,easy-to-guess-at ending and lacklustre prose cannot restore.

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Blood from Stone (Hardcover)

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