Error of Judgement [Paperback]

Error of Judgement is a taut legal thriller, but suffers from a heavy humour and a muddled plot which is difficult to follow at times. The central character Nick Donwnes is well- presented but is hard to relate to, and the heavy psychological analysis spoils the thread of the story. Sally Fielding is the best character in the novel, but too little of the story concentrates on her. In conclusion, Error Of judgement tries to cover too much ground in its story .

This is the first Dexter Dias novel I have read, and I regret to say I found it rather disappointing. The premise - mentally-disturbed man buries his brother's body, then tells the police where to find it - did-he-or-didn't-he kill his brother? - is intriguing and could have formed the basis for a really good investigative yarn. Unfortunately the main character is so wet, not to say dim, that it is really very difficult to feel much beyond irritation with him - surely even he could see that the mysterious Liz, the wife of the self-confessed killer, is dangerously wacky, and not to be touched with the proverbial barge-pole? Alas, if the character had twigged that as soon as he should have done, there would really not have been much of a story left. What remains veers between pseudo-science (a psychiatrist whose grasp of her subject seems worryingly slight) and rather limp courtroom drama (oh, how I longed for John Mortimer's deft touch!), with our hero (accused of sexual assault) and his barrister (his ex-girlfriend, surely a recipe for disaster) so busy bickering that they fail to get round to addressing various essential points about the defence (or lack of it, even though we know our hero is innocent - his utter wetness even extends to half-admitting his guilt in court, surely a suicidal step even a guilt-ridden lapsed Catholic would hesitate to take unless he either had a martyr complex or was several sandwiches short of a picnic).

What really irritated me about the book, though, was the author's relentless sexism and outdated gender-stereotyping (men are all brutes, women are either madonnas or whores). Any number of male thriller-writers have shown that they are not bound by such cultural assumptions; it is deeply disappointing to find one who seems bent on reaffirming them.

Having thought up a potentially excellent plot-line, the author seems then to have been unsure what to do with it. The story is curiously lacking in atmosphere, and where scientific information (forensic evidence, psychiatric diagnoses) are brought up, one has the feeling that the author simply couldn't be bothered to research his subjects in depth, and so simply threw together some superficial details as background. The result is unconvincing (by the mid-1990s DNA testing was advanced enough to have provided positive corpse identification, yet it is not even mentioned) and, in the end, uninteresting. I read it to the end simply because I kept feeling I had to give it a chance, but again the hero's inability to use his common-sense results in a messy denouement that in real life would probably have put our hero behind bars (perhaps for his own safety!).

This disappointment will not prevent me reading Dexter Dias's other books, because he has undoubted talent as a writer. I just wish he had made more use of it in this one!

This is the first Dexter Dias novel I have read, and I regret to say I found it rather disappointing. The premise - mentally-disturbed man buries his brother's body, then tells the police where to find it - did-he-or-didn't-he kill his brother? - is intriguing and could have formed the basis for a really good investigative yarn. Unfortunately the main character is so wet, not to say dim, that it is really very difficult to feel much beyond irritation with him - surely even he could see that the mysterious Liz, the wife of the self-confessed killer, is dangerously wacky, and not to be touched with the proverbial barge-pole? Alas, if the character had twigged that as soon as he should have done, there would really not have been much of a story left. What remains veers between pseudo-science (a psychiatrist whose grasp of her subject seems worryingly slight) and rather limp courtroom drama (oh, how I longed for John Mortimer's deft touch!), with our hero (accused of sexual assault) and his barrister (his ex-girlfriend, surely a recipe for disaster) so busy bickering that they fail to get round to addressing various essential points about the defence (or lack of it, even though we know our hero is innocent - his utter wetness even extends to half-admitting his guilt in court, surely a suicidal step even a guilt-ridden lapsed Catholic would hesitate to take unless he either had a martyr complex or was several sandwiches short of a picnic).

What really irritated me about the book, though, was the author's relentless sexism and outdated gender-stereotyping (men are all brutes, women are either madonnas or whores). Any number of male thriller-writers have shown that they are not bound by such cultural assumptions; it is deeply disappointing to find one who seems bent on reaffirming them.

Having thought up a potentially excellent plot-line, the author seems then to have been unsure what to do with it. The story is curiously lacking in atmosphere, and where scientific information (forensic evidence, psychiatric diagnoses) are brought up, one has the feeling that the author simply couldn't be bothered to research his subjects in depth, and so simply threw together some superficial details as background. The result is unconvincing (by the mid-1990s DNA testing was advanced enough to have provided positive corpse identification, yet it is not even mentioned) and, in the end, uninteresting. I read it to the end simply because I kept feeling I had to give it a chance, but again the hero's inability to use his common-sense results in a messy denouement that in real life would probably have put our hero behind bars (perhaps for his own safety!).

This disappointment will not prevent me reading Dexter Dias's other books, because he has undoubted talent as a writer. I just wish he had made more use of it in this one!