First up, this novel isn’t a courtroom drama. Literally, it is about a big pharma multinational testing out what could be a game-changing drug to combat the effects of dementia. Metaphorically, though, Jo Spain’s latest thriller sees the lives of several individuals put under intense scrutiny, as if being questioned by a hard-nosed barrister in a court of law. Serious questions are asked, and some people fall after being challenged.
I am not normally a fan of split-time narratives, as they are all too often distracting short cuts, but Jo Spain is too good a writer to be accused of that, and in her hands it works well. There are three time zones. In 2014 we are in a prestigious Irish university college, St Edmunds, and we meet Dani. She is asleep, but her lover – Theo Laurent, French, and a fellow student – is about to make a very serious decision. He carefully climbs down from their shared bed and leaves. Not ‘leaves’ as in just going back to his own room, but ‘leaves’ as in disappears. Totally. Completely. From the face of the earth. Anxious and baffled hours for Dani turn into days and weeks. The police are not interested. Theo’s estranged and autocratic father reluctantly tells Dani over the ‘phone that he has received an email from his son stating that he has left the academic world to go travelling.
The two other time frames are 2023 and the present day. More so than in her excellent Tom Reynolds police procedural series, Jo Spain, in her standalone novels, likes to sucker punch her readers with astonishing plot twists, none more breathtaking than in The Perfect Lie ( click the link to read my review) These literary magic tricks are usually saved until the final pages of the novel, but here she does her stuff about half way through, when she lets us know that Dani is not who or what we think she is. To say more would be to spoil the fun. Suffice it to say that Jo Spain simply encourages us to make assumptions, which she then delights in shattering.
We learn that Dani, as far as the new ‘wonder drug’ is concerned, certainly has a dog in this particular fight. Her widowed mother is slowly succumbing to the inexorable death sentence known as Alzheimer’s. What if the new wonder drug could arrest her mother’s decline, and restore her memory, and make her sit up in bed with delight when her daughter comes to visit?
Academic impartiality seems to be a things of the past, certainly in the United Kingdom, and in Ireland, where this novel is set. In England, many universities – and even some independent school – have been bought and sold with Chinese money, but in the case of St Edmunds, it is not Xi’s millions that is paying the salaries of lecturers and professors, but the big dollars of the pharmaceutical industry. A convincing report from the medical researchers at St Edmunds, stating that the new drug poses no side-effect risks means that Turner Pharma can go ahead and mass produce the tablets, and ensuring massive world-wide profits. In trying to solve the mystery of Theo’s disappearance, Dani learns that pharmaceutical companies, just like their illegal counterparts in Mexico and Columbia, employ clever but crooked lawyers, use physical enforcers, and have limitless budgets to buy off politicians and law enforcement
The Trial works brilliantly on many different levels. There is the human anguish as Dani attempts to come to terms with Theo’s inexplicable departure. Jo Spain then invites us to be disgusted at the many ways in which academic institutions can become a simple market place commodity, and sold to the highest bidder. Above all, though, is the satisfaction derived from reading something written by a natural born story teller. There is not a word out of place, not a scene that wouldn’t work as a TV screenplay and – best of all – human characters of whom we might say, “Yes – I know someone like that.” The Trial is published by Quercus and is available now.
Confession time: while I have read and enjoyed previous novels by mesdames Massen, Perks and Spain, Andrea Mara is a new name to me. Turns out she is a compatriot of Jo Spain, also lives in Dublin’s fair City, and her previous novel All Her Fault was a bestseller. So, the loss is all mine. In Hide and Seek, it’s worst nightmare time, especially if you are a parent or, like me, a grandparent. The back-story is that little Lily Murphy goes missing from her Dublin suburb and is never found. Years later, Joanna moves into what was Lily’s home and from here, things just become more scary and spine tingling. This will be published by Bantam Press 
Eve Hunter is well established now in the sharp-elbowed assembly of fictional Detective Inspectors. Her beat is The Granite City of Aberdeen. I reviewed – and enjoyed – two earlier novels, 
Heidi Perks is another writer whose previous books 
Such is the case in The Perfect Lie. Erin Kennedy – an Irish lass – works in publishing in New York, is married to American cop Danny Ryan, and they live in Newport, Rhode Island. No, Danny is not a fellow Celt, despite his surname, but beautifully black, at least in Erin’s eyes. One morning, she answers the doorbell to their apartment and admits Danny’s cop colleague Ben – stern of face – and a couple of fellow officers. Within seconds Danny, freshly showered and shaved for the day’s shift has walked to the balcony and jumped to his death on the concrete four floors below.
Fans of dark domestic drama should love this. The ‘good man’ in question is Thomas Martin. He was the perfect family man, husband, father son and brother. He had a dream job and a lovely home. But when disaster strikes, and dreadful suffering is inflicted on those he loves, he is forced to conduct the most forensic examination of his own personality, motivation and actions. Ani Katz is a writer, photographer and teacher. She was born and raised on the south shore of Long Island, and holds a MFA in photography from Columbia College, Chicago, and a BA from Yale. She lives in Brooklyn. A Good Man is published by Windmill/Penguin Random House. It came out in hardback in January last year and the paperback will be out on 
I reviewed – and loved – an earlier Heidi Perks novel back in 2019, when 
Jo Spain is, in my opinion, one of the most gifted writers we have. She is based in Dublin, and not content with creating a hugely popular police procedural series featuring Detective Tom Reynolds, she writes scripts and screenplays for television and cinema, and also managed to write superb standalone thrillers. The Perfect Lie belongs to the latter category, but moves the action from Ireland to America’s east coast. Erin Kennedy lives in Newport, Long Island with her detective husband Danny. Her idyllic life turns into a nightmare when he jumps to his death from their fourth-floor apartment.
artre insisted that the celebrated line from his 1944 play Huis Clos (No Exit), “L’enfer, c’est les autres.” was forever misinterpreted, but the idea that hell is other people has stuck, despite the protestations of the Great Existentialist. Some, like Jo Spain in her latest novel Six Wicked Reasons, would suggest – to mix and match poets – that Dante’s Nine Circles of Hell could be condensed into an overpowering tenth – Family.
The Lattimer family, patriarch Frazer, sons James, Adam and Ryan, daughters Ellen, Kate and Clíodhna – Clio – have assembled at the family home in south east Ireland overlooking the waters of Spanish Cove in the Irish Sea, so called because of its earliest recorded casualties – sailors from a Spanish galleon blown adrift from the Armada and then shattered on the hidden rocks.
eaders new to Jo Spain’s novels will welcome the apparently straightforward back-stories of Frazer Lattimer’s children, and their motives for wanting him dead. Those who know that the author is The Mistress of Misdirection will suspect, correctly, that this is only the start. But, for the record, I give you the Lattimer children. James is a big media name, with TV screenwriting and production credits on his CV. Lives in Dublin, of course with ex-model wife and step daughter. Adam – now there’s a tale. He now lives abroad, making money for fun, but he disappeared ten years earlier, broke the heart of his late mother Kathleen, and has now re-appeared, equally mysteriously, and it is his return ‘from the dead’ which has prompted the reunion. Ryan, alas poor Ryan. Drug addicted as a teenager, he has somehow survived industrial intakes of pharmaceuticals, and now lives in Italy, just about getting by as an odd-job man.
llen Lattimer is the female equivalent of the Prodigal Son’s brother. Remember, the bloke who stayed at home while his brother was out on the town, giving it all away? Ellen has stayed at home, cleaning, cooking, dusting – and paying for the upkeep of the house. She is prim, joyless, and what Private Eye used to call “tight-lipped and ashen-faced.” Kate, on the other hand, has spread her wings and learned to fly. Having overcome a teenage weight problem which caused her to be known locally as King Kong, she is now svelte, lean and lovely. Also, married to a filthy rich Chinese businessman with a chain of luxury hotels. Clio, though has been in the wars. Summoned from a dingy bedsit in downtown New York to attend the family gathering, she is the most volatile of the children, the antithesis of the line from the old hymn which described Our Lord as “slow to chide and swift to bless.”
s an amateur wordsmith I can only guess at Jo Spain’s writing technique; her prose is so assured, so fluent and has that sense of flair that cannot, surely, be the result only of endless hours of editing. No matter how long you spend polishing a piece of coal, you will never transform it into a gem stone. Six Wicked Reasons is a diamond, multi-faceted and reflecting both the light and the darkness of the human soul. It is 
fullybooked2017 