Book Club: Review thread The Brief by Simon Michael

[midnightcatprowl]

This thread is for your review of this book when you've read it or read as far as you are going to and for discussion of reviews. Reviews will often contain 'spoilers' so read at your own risk!

N.B. Short reviews, even as little as one sentence or one word, are just as welcome long reviews.

[MistyMeena]

Slight spoilers and apologies for too much fine detail.

This was a book of two halves. The first half was calculated court room drama and the second half was boy’s own adventure. The second part was not what I expected either from the book or from the main character, Charles. It was a good read but fell short of being sophisticated.
There are times when an eye for detail can be a curse. I wanted to see the bigger picture and the rollicking story that was unfolding but time and again found myself wanting to ask the author about details. I don’t want to pick holes (but I do) when I did enjoy the book but as one of the policemen says “barristers think things through, work logically; they can assess evidence; and they know how to avoid the mistakes that get their clients caught.” I’m not a barrister but the author is. Do I expect too much from him? I think that a really good crime story can have you flicking back through the pages to see who said what, who was present in a scene, the order that a clue was discovered in. You shouldn’t be looking back wondering why in a flat that’s “only got tea” the character is on his “third cup of instant coffee” a few pages later (yes, they could have bought some when they were out but it felt like a really intense time and the action didn’t lend itself to a spot of shopping in between). And then I wonder why something like that matters to me? It could be much slicker. Small changes could really lift the impact of this book. It was perhaps one edit short of completion.

The contrasting halves of the book were ok although I think I would rather have had one style or the other. There was a long build up to the trial and the transcript worked very well. It was all very orderly. Charles was marked out as being different from the other barristers (even though he had gone to Cambridge). His fight and flight responses were reasonably in keeping. However, I was shocked that he was contemplating escape as they went into his flat. Once he had seen what was there, extricating himself from the situation made more sense, particularly when he remembered meeting Wheatley before. Up until then he should have been believing in the law, the processes and the words. Realising that Wheatley would not play fair was reason to get out.

I had a real problem with the time frame in this book.

Part One says 1960 then there’s the trial and everything seems well paced. Part Three is labelled 1962. I then found I had no sense of how the rest of the book moves on, days, weeks or months, it could have been any until the very end when only days seem to have passed. The main trouble was that a few chapters into Part Three Charles is reading about arrests being made in the Great Train Robbery. That robbery took place on the day that my parents got married and it happens to be a date that sticks in my mind, suddenly for me the book was in 1963. Moving months forward would make sense when linked with Sands and Plumber making a reappearance after been given prison sentences of 9 and 6 years respectively in November 1960 (even with remand and good behaviour, would they have been released so quickly from a crime committed in 1960?). I had happily moved on in time until back in Chambers the chairs from the party at the start of Part Three had not been moved back out; it must have only been days since the party. Back in 1962 then? And another niggle arises, key evidence regarding the barrister’s robes bag has revealed that Charles is very proud of his achievement in Plumber’s case and that he mentions it frequently, yet when he sees that his notebook from the end of 1960 is missing he does not immediately remember this case (no more than two years before and of key significance in his life).

I mentioned a continuity error at a crucial point. The timing of the return of the Jaguar to the garage does not fit with Charles coming to visit Henrietta “today”. Or am I wrong, there’s only so many times I want to keep looking back.

Overall, a good story in need of a good edit to lift it.
MM

[midnightcatprowl]

I have to be careful what I say in this review as I enjoyed the book so much I went straight on to read the sequel 'An Honest Man' and some details of the two are now rather entangled in my mind or rather they have become one continuous narrative.

I agree with much of what MistyMeena has said about about inaccuracies and continuity errors in The Brief and I think they continue into An Honest Man. Personally however I found The Brief (and then An Honest Man) such a good 'read' and a real page turner that I was less bothered by the details and too much bound up in the action. I did very much like that the reader saw the court papers whereas in fiction of this type you would normally only be admitted to the investigation, interviews with the accused and the court scenes. Seeing more of the behind the scenes stuff gave an extra depth and interest to a lay person.

When I met the author at a book signing in Waterstones he was very much promoting his books on the basis of them being set in the gangland of the East End of London in the sixties (the area where he grew up) and particularly against the background of such gang leaders as the Kray Twins (the Kray Twins come strongly into view in An Honest Man). What I found even more interesting about the books was the insight into what goes on in legal circles and even more so into the serious corruption in the police force in the detective branches, drugs squad, etc - especially in the Metropolitan Police Force - in the 60's. The arrests and prosecutions of police officers and finally root and branch reform of the Metropolitan Police only came later and deeply shocked the public but still without perhaps the public being fully aware of the deeply ingrained and complex nature of the rot.

It is startling when Charles is arrested and then suddenly makes a run for it but as a barrister he would be more aware (and aware long before the general public) of the level of corruption in the police force and that he would have pretty much no chance once he was in custody. I'd also be sceptical about how much a barrister 'should' or 'would' believe in the law and the processes of the law. In our legal system you are looking at what is essentially a competition between two barristers or two sets of barristers and the winner is the prosecutor who, for example, gets the prisoner put away, or the defending barrister who gets their client off. It is an intriguing point - of which I've only gradually become fully aware, and it is a point which comes very much to the fore in An Honest Man - that a defending barrister can happily continue to try to prove that their client didn't do it, even though they know perfectly well that they did or are fairly sure that they did, just as long as the client does not tell the barrister they are guilty. If the client admits to the barrister that they are guilty then the barrister cannot continue to defend them - all they can do then, if following legal etiquette - is advise the client to plead guilty and if they do the barrister can then plead extenuating circumstances if there are any which might lead for example to a lesser sentence. It is an interesting distinction to say the least. This isn't criticism of our legal system, inefficient and murky though it sometimes is, because if you don't like what you've got you've got to come up with a better suggestion and I'm not quite sure what that is. Nevertheless even barristers who follow legal etiquette to the letter must have some degree of cynicism about the actual results of court cases and must feel less than confident about the results of being prosecuted themselves.

but as one of the policemen says “barristers think things through, work logically; they can assess evidence; and they know how to avoid the mistakes that get their clients caught.” I’m not a barrister but the author is. Do I expect too much from him?

I suspect you do because it is also of course the - perfectly legitimate in the context of our legal system - role of barristers to work to confuse issues, to make what seemed certain less certain, to extract only what they want from witnesses and try to avoid witnesses providing other useful material (useful to the other side). On the one hand I was mildly irritated and surprised by some of the inconsistencies in the books, but on the other hand it seemed just as much in character for a barrister to write confusing stuff as it would seem for them to write clear and logical stuff. I'd be intrigued to know how the author would respond to that comment, would he be annoyed or amused, would he say - oh dear I made an out of character mistake - or would he say - yes but I was trying to confuse you and it is up to you to work it out?

Not great literature. A very enjoyable read. Brings up a lot of issues about which many of us may not have been fully aware and gave me a lot to think about afterwards.

[midnightcatprowl]

Just out of interest the third book in this series is due out in a Kindle version in May and paperback in June. 'The Lighterman' follows 'The Brief' and 'An Honest Man'.

I'm sufficiently into this author now that I've pre-ordered the Kindle version.