Joan Brady’s previous books include Theory of War, a powerful historical novel which won the Whitbread Book of the Year prize. Now she has written a thriller. It is set in Springfield, Illinois, once the home of Abraham Lincoln and now a prosperous city overshadowed by an unholy alliance of politicians, cops, lawyers and bankers. No one, however, doubts the integrity of Hugh Freyl, whose family has dominated the city’s public life for generations. Like justice itself, Hugh is blind, which means he cannot see the face of the person who bludgeons him to death in the library of his own law firm.
The novel has a double narrative in which each strand enriches and comments on the other. The first leads away from the murder and charts the efforts of David Marion, a convicted double murderer whom Hugh has rehabilitated, to discover who killed his patron. In the eyes of the world, including Hugh’s mother and the police, David himself is the obvious suspect. Sometimes even David finds it hard to believe his own innocence.
The second narrative, intercut with the first, belongs to Hugh himself, speaking (presumably) from some celestial vantage point beyond the grave and leading towards his own murder. After the onset of blindness and the death of his wife, he throws himself into educating long-term prisoners in the maximum security South Hams state prison. David Marion, charismatic, highly intelligent and as tough as they come, is Hugh’s star pupil, and Hugh’s struggle to have him released from prison is one of the most moving parts of the book.
Back in the present, David’s investigation into Hugh’s murder brings him up against financial fraud, political skul- duggery and police corruption.
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