RATING: GOOD
SPOILERS!!!
In this book Benson is in a difficult position as he has to defend a man, Brent Stainsby, who has been charged with murder.
His girlfriend, Diane Heybridge, was found hanged from her London flat with a blood orange in her mouth. In the flat the police found a cigarette stub with Stainsby's DNA as well as a few hairs. Diane and Stainsby had been a couple for years, and Diana was very fond of his parents. When Stainsby's father died shortly after his wife, he left half his assets to Diane as well as his wife's jewels. Then Diane left Stainsby, and he was seething, claiming that she would not see a penny. Diane left Dover for London, and she only lived there a month because she was found dead.
All the evidence is against Stainsby, and he swears that he did not kill her. He claims that Diane committed suicide. When he was first questioned, he denied having been to London or the flat, but now he says that he went to see her, but he left and Diane was alive. Benson and Tess believe him, especially when one of Diane's friends, Jane, tells them that Diane killed herself intending to frame him, but she has no intention to say so in court. Jane says that Stainsby was once accused of beating up a police officer, and Diane was his alibi.
That event that happened in 2009 seems to be linked to Diane's death. And as the trial takes place and Benson proves to be very clever, Benson and Tess learn that Diane went to the police to accuse Stainsby of smuggling immigrants into the country. He was in cahoots with the leader of two criminal bands. One of these criminals is Meersham, who Benson knows. When he was in prison, Benson was threatened by Meersham's men, who told him that his brother would suffer the consequences if he did not do as they said. What Benson did was to tell the governor that he wanted to write to librarians for book donations. What Benson did not know is that when the books arrived, they had a page impregnated with a drug. As a consequence, a young convict, but the blame falls on Benson's cell mate.
Benson manages to get Stainsby acquitted. When Benson, Tess, his clerk, Archie, and his typist Molly are in the office, Stainsby arrives to thank him, and it is then that he lets them know that he did kill Diane. Benson and Tess are incensed and hate how things turned out.
That night Benson is outside his houseboat when a car comes forward, almost running him over, and then a body is dropped. It is Stainsby. He has been killed. Later he and his team are together talking, one of the police officers who were involved in the case when Stainsby was arrested in 2009. He explains that Diane contacted him, and she sent him a dossier. They launched an operation, and it was through this dossier that they discovered that DCI was involved with Meersham, and now both are arrested. It seems that Meersham threatened to hurt the DCI's family, so that is why he manipulated everything.
Benson still has the stigma of his past and the murder of Paul Harbeton. When Tess tells him that he needs to clear his name and find out the truth, he tells her to leave the past be. Yet, TEss and her friend Sally start investigating. The person who found Paul's body that day had a girlfriend back then, and the woman talks to Sally and Tess. She tells them that Lever gave her a bracelet, which she thought was just a cheap jewel, but when they broke up, she discovered that it had real diamonds. Sally decides to find out about the jewel, and she eventually discovers that the owner of the jewel was the mother of Annette Merrington. Annette Merrington's son, Richard, is the Secretary of State for Justice, who for some reason is against Benson and wants his fall. Merrington hired a detective to find out things about Benson, and he discovered that a anonymous protector gave Benson the money to become a barrister. Merrington pushes the detective to discover the name of the benefactor. What he discovers is that it was Annette, his mother, who donated the money to Benson. This is a surprise and I wonder why. So now there is a new element. The jewel that belonged to the family was found near the body of Paul Harbeton. Sally also finds out that Benson's barrister and mentor Helen Camberbey is also linked to the Merrington family as his father worked with Annette's father in law.
At the end of the novel Tess phones Benson to say that they have a new case, a murder case, which I imagine will be the next book.
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