New Book - Summary Justice - Benson and de Vere 1 - by John Fairfax (Pages 1 - 121)

 First Published: 2017

In 1999 William Benson was sentenced to life imprisonment for killing a man.

 During the trial it came out that William was in a bar with his girlfriend of the time,Jessica, and a man, Paul Halbeton, knocked him, and there were words. Later the evidence suggests that Benson followed Halbeton and Benson killed him. William insists that he is innocent, but the evidence is against him. Tess de Vere is a young woman doing work experience for William's lawyers, and when on one occasion William says that after seeing the occurences during a trial this is what he likes and would like to be, and Tess encourages to do it even if he is found guilty. When he tells his lawyers he wants to come to the bar, he is told that the only way to do it is to plead guilty of the crime he is accused of, and even so, it would be very difficult.

Eleven years later William is now on licence and has managed to become a barrister even though he doesn't have it easy. It is thanks to his barrister, Helen Camberly, and anonymous donor of the funds he needs that William managed to become a barrister. Now he practises from an old fishmonger's, and his assistant is Archie, whose family owned the fishmonger's and he met in prison. 

Now William and Tess de Vere meet again to join forces in William's first murder trial. A woman, Sarah Collingstone, is accused of killing her boss. Sarah has had a difficult life; her son, who was born prematurely, after she got involved in a car accident which killed her best friend and her son's father. Her son, Daniel was born with a disability. Andrew Bealing owned a haulage company and hired people through a charity because he himself had struggled in life. Andrew hired Sarah as his assistant. Andrew is the victim, and Sarah is accused of killing him after he decided to call off her affair. Sarah tells William that she and Andrew didn't have an affair and didn't go to the company the night he was murdered. However, there is strong evidence against her. Many claim that Andrew and Sarah were intimate, and what is worse, her DNA is on the neck of the bottle Andrew was killed with.

Now the trial has started and Benson is doing a good job disarming the witnesses that claim that Andrew and Sarah were having an affair. Meanwhile, Tess keeps investigating.

This is an interesting book, and I am very curious to know what really happened to Andrew.