The Brief

Author/Guide: Simon Michael

Why a Booktrail?

1960s: London is a city of gang wars, corrupt police, vice and pornography

ISBN: 978-1910692004
Genre: Crime, Historical, legal/political

Comment

What you need to know before your trail

Barrister Charles Holborne spends his life dealing with law breakers, people of violent criminality. But when his philandering wife Henrietta is found with her throat slashed, Charles finds himself accused of the crime.

Arrested for her murder, can Charles discover the truth of her brutal death, and prove his innocence to the most skeptical of investigators?

Locations

Reset

Travel Guide

London 1960s

This is a look at the legal London – of the old courthouses and ancient temples mixed with the more modern and progressive Fleet Street. Charles Holborne is also a man who is a mix of two worlds in another way – he doesn’t come from a privileged background and his status in London now as a lawyer has earned him a few enemies. His world is one of two sides, and a number of shadows which blur the line between right and wrong, good and evil..

Chancery Lane, Court

“He still loved the sensation of Dislocation he experience every time he walked through the archway from the Dikensisan Temple onto Twentieth century Fleet Street

It was as if it was caught in a dislocation of time. So too are the local establishments who are debating whether to install electric lights. Charles knows it is only a matter of time, but he would miss the hiss of gas, the fluttering flames and the shifting shadows.

And then we go from St Paul’s Cathedral to the visceral taste of Mick’s cafe on Fleet Street

“..its dome barely visible in the murky light……into a hot exhalation of bacon fat and cigarette smoke.” Its all-day breakfast was a heart-stopping pyramid but what is more hearty still is the bawdy jokes and easy conversation.

As well as the physical landscape of 1960s London, the wider era is evoked with as much care and attention – but with a shadowy cloak around the criminal fraternity of the time – The Kray Twins and the Great Train Robbery created a recent world that although seemingly of another time, enables you to mix time and place and recent history into one legally thrilling novel.

Streetview Maps

A) London - The Law Courts

C) London - Chancery Lane - The Law Courts

Booktrailer Review

Susan: @thebooktrailer

This was a gem of a find for many reasons – the real court documents and police statements added to the already immersive detail and added to the unique premise of the criminal set up, I was hooked from page one. The novel was very immersive – not just in the bacon smells of the cafe or the old smell of the stone walls but the language, the attitudes and the fact that this was still a time where the death penalty cloud hung over everyone’s head.

Although billed as a legal thriller, it’s so much more – like a snapshot of 1960s London and a journey back into the past. London and the Legal community seen through the eyes of Charles – a jewish boy done good – was really well done and created a great deal of underlying intrigue and a danger of what could go wrong – Charles Holborne is a fascinating character that’s for sure.

The book starts out slow but this is for a very good reason – by the time the bomb explodes, you’ll be having palpations from the building up of tension and will appreciate the feeling of a darn good read.