Somehow I must have missed the last entrant in the Trish Maquire series, but how quickly I was plunged in her world - as with one sentence Anthony, Trish's head of chambers, was before me in startling clarity: `weird how that bull's-turd colour suits you' Anthony says as he and Trish emerge from chambers en route to lunch.
Trish Maquire has now taken silk and is a QC much to the surprise and disgust of Barrister Robert Anstey who cannot imagine how anyone could prefer Trish to him! Consequently, she is now an expensive barrister, and so until she has won a few cases, she has rather more time on her hands than she has been used to.
However, that looks to change when Anthony is unable to act in the case of Clean World Waste Management v Angela Fortwell, and he asks Trish to take over. Trish is reluctant. The defendant Angie and her husband John had given up their corporate finance life in London and settled in a farm in Northumberland to bring up their children. Unfortunately their dreams didn't work out and when John is killed by an explosion in Clean World Waste Management's tanks of chemical waste, Angie had naively assumed that she would get justice for her husband's death, but everyone she contacted turned their back. Only Friends Against The Destruction of the Environment (FADE) offered any practical help.
There are many twists and turns as Trish delves deeper into the background to the case than Robert, acting as her junior, or her client, Clean World Waste Management, would like. As life has taught us all, not everyone is who they seem and many have a hidden agenda which Trish is so good at ferreting out.
On a personal front, after many ups and downs Trish and George have settled into something that certainly suits them for the present. Trish maintains her loft in Southwark, and George his cosy Fulham house. David, her half brother, has taken up with Jay Smith who is something of an experiment from the other side of the tracks.
Told from two points of view - Trisha's and Angie's - this is a first class read with an unexpected climax. Not to be missed.
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Lizzie Hayes
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