Patron and prisoner

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.