Today is my stop on the blog tour for The Night Lawyer by Alex Churchill. If you adore legal thrillers, you must check out this book! It was the Sunday Times Crime Club pick for June 2020, and after reading the book (devouring it would be a better term!), I understand why.

Cover of The Night Lawyer by Alex Churchill

The Night Lawyer by Alex Churchill

Genre: Legal thiller

Publication: RedDoor Press, June 11, 2020

Sophie Angel is the night lawyer.

Once a week, she’s the one who decides what the papers can and can’t say. During the day, she’s a barrister. She struggles for justice in a system that’s close to collapse, where she confronts the most dangerous aspects of humanity. Her life changes when a wealthy Russian offers her the biggest case of her career, a rape trial with a seemingly innocent client.

But is someone manipulating Sophie from the shadows? And is it someone from her childhood in Soviet Russia or is the danger much closer to home?

With her marriage under strain and haunted by nightmares from the past, Sophie must find the answer to these questions before it’s too late. This is a story about betrayal, trust, guilt and innocence, played out from the courtrooms of London to the darkest corners of Soviet era Moscow.

My thoughts

It’s not often that I use the words “heart crushing” to describe a legal thriller. Nor do my notes usually include the phrase “did NOT see that coming” more than once for any type of book, thriller or otherwise. With the number of suspense/thriller novels I read, it’s easy to be blasé about plot twists or characters. As a writer who studies the craft of fiction writing, I can see clumsily-executed plot points and see how the author manipulated all the story pieces to artificially elicit thrills and gasps from the reader.

Not so here. Churchill’s writing feels effortless as she creates an eerie and increasingly tense situation for Sophie Angel to navigate. I started reading at lunchtime, intending only to read a few pages before my afternoon writing session. Then the story hooked me such that I had to keep reading . . . and reading . . . and reading . . . and before I knew it, I finished the book.

Early on in the book, Sophie remembers one of her father’s Russian sayings, a quote from Chekov: “Don’t tell me the moon is shining. Show me the glint of light on broken glass.” It’s the classic show don’t tell axiom from writing 101, along with the sage advice to find the detail that matters. Churchill has absorbed this lesson so well that it feels effortless. She shows all those little telling details that add up to so much more than the sum of their total, both in Sophie’s personal life and her court cases.

Characterization

Sophie is a defense attorney. Her husband Theo has recently been promoted to QC in the UK legal system, which means, oddly enough, that he has less income until he gains more experience. Her jobs are keeping them financially afloat. A violent criminal that she refused to defend has escaped prison and might be targeting her. Her newest client is a seemingly innocent man, but defending the innocent is harder than defending the possibly guilty. Then there’s the new newspaper owner’s Russian wife, who has taken an odd interest in Sophie and seems vaguely familiar. But why?

In sum, this is a woman under incredible pressure. Competing work demands, financial problems, and issues from the past are overwhelming her. While many people might not sympathize with a criminal defense attorney, Sophie is a sympathetic character. She is a woman who straddles two worlds: the legal chambers and the newspaper, the dual role of wife and colleague of the same man, and as an immigrant, the Britain of her adult life and the Russia of her childhood.

She also realizes that perhaps something she believed about her childhood isn’t true. Her parents have secrets. And as she notes, secrets lead to betrayal.

The question is, does Sophie want to know these secrets? What betrayal will they lead to?

Plot

The story moves along effortlessly, tying disparate story threads together into increasingly complex knots that tighten at the smallest detail. The suspense escalates steadily. The atmosphere gives the sense of impending danger, even when I didn’t know what the danger might be. Even when I did think I knew what the danger was, I was often wrong. Very wrong.

By the time the narrative reached the climax, I was breathless. Waiting. Hoping for the best. Dreading the worst, even though I didn’t know what that could be worse.

Most legal thrillers don’t make me want to weep. The Night Lawyer did. Some of the plot twists were not only unexpected but truly gut-wrenching. Maybe if I had been able to read the book dispassionately and coldly, I would have seen the twists coming. (I rather doubt it.) But I was so emotionally absorbed and invested in Sophie’s situation that the twists blindsided me as much as Sophie.

Recommended

The book is by turns fascinating and creepy, horrifying and heart-breaking and frustrating, and always readable. I highly recommend The Night Lawyer to any legal thriller fan.

I received a complimentary copy of The Night Lawyer in exchange for an honest review and I was not required to write a positive review. All opinions are my own.

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If you love legal thrillers, also check out my review for The Holdout by Graham Moore.