Books - GRIPPED BY TENSE COURTROOM TALE.COURTROOM dramas tend to be an American phenomenon but James Humphreys James Humphreys is a writer and political campaigner who was born 1967 in Cambridge, UK. Author of psychological thrillers "Sleeping Partner" and "Riptide"[1]. Civil servant in the Department of the Environment (1992-1997) and Prime Minister's Office (1998-2003). proves that m'learned friends can turn it on for the English legal eagles. Sleeping Partner sleeping partner Noun a partner in a business who shares in the financing but does not take part in its management Noun 1. sleeping partner (Pan, pounds 5.99) is set around the murder trial of Clarrie Morland - a nice, quiet, middle-class girl who apparently wouldn't hurt a fly. But the police reckon that she cold-bloodedly blasted her lover to death with a shotgun. There's plenty of motive, since he apparently double-crossed her over a land deal and also betrayed her with another woman. There are also witnesses who saw her in the vicinity carrying a gun, and plenty of the victim's friends and family are determined to see her convicted. Unfortunately, Clarrie can remember nothing of the fateful fate·ful adj. 1. Vitally affecting subsequent events; being of great consequence; momentous: a fateful decision to counterattack. 2. Controlled by or as if by fate; predetermined. 3. day after being cut out of the wreckage wreck·age n. 1. The act of wrecking or the state of being wrecked. 2. Something wrecked. 3. The debris of something wrecked. of her car which crashed while she was apparently fleeing from the scene of the crime. This is all perfectly good, gripping stuff as the evidence is examined in court. But what makes this exceptional is the portrayal of Clarrie, with each little humiliation and hurt stabbing stab v. stabbed, stab·bing, stabs v.tr. 1. To pierce or wound with or as if with a pointed weapon. 2. To plunge (a pointed weapon or instrument) into something. 3. the reader as much as it wounds her. Tense and clever, this is good stuff. |
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