Sometimes you read a mystery novel and are dazzled. Sometimes you read one. and you don’t think you’ll ever be able to look at mystery novels the same again. And sometimes you read a mystery and think this isn’t a mystery, this is a literary work.
Forced Confessions is the third Will Benson courtroom thriller by John Fairfax. It dazzles, it surpasses most mysteries written today, and it qualified as a literary effort. To read it is to open a literary kachina doll, with mysteries inside mysteries, crimes within crimes, and stories inside stories. And at the end, the reader is left with the realization that evidence does not equal truth, and the law is administered very imperfectly indeed.
Will Benson is the barrister who is a convicted murderer. He served 11 years in prison. To be able to have even a very small chance of practicing law, he had to confess to the crime he was accused of. Through two sensational cases, he has gained a fame, and notoriety, that many attorneys might envy. The London legal profession hates him; the current Cabinet Minister for Justice wants to destroy him.
He’s defending a husband and wife in a case in which the husband is accused of killing a Spanish doctor who was having an affair with the wife. The wife is charged as an accessory. Her best friend will testify against them both. There was motive and opportunity, and the husband was seen leaving the crime scene shortly after the victim’s body was found.
John Fairfax, aka William Brodrick
Benson is having something of an existential crisis; his mentor, the woman attorney who guided him and encouraged him (and defended him in his own trial) is dying of cancer. His father and brother believe he was guilty of the murder he was convicted of. And his associate Tess de Vere has ignored Benson’s plea and has been investigating the murder he was accused of. And the stories and crimes begin to swirl together and inside each other. Nothing, including the murder 11 years before, is what it seems to be.
The result is one outstanding story.
John Fairfax is the pen name for British writer William Brodrick, the author of the Father Anselm mysteries. Under the Fairfax name, he’s also published Blind Defence and Forced Confessions. Brodrick was a friar in the Augustine order before he became a barrister and a writer. The Father Anselm mystery A Whispered Name won the Crime Writers’ Association Gold Dagger Award in 2009, and Forced Confessions was shortlisted for the Crime Writers Association Award in 2020.. Brodrick lives in France.
Forced Confessions is a stunning read, one of the best mysteries I’ve read. Ever.
Related:
Blind Defence by John Fairfax.
Summary Justice by John Fairfax.
My review of The Day of the Lie by William Brodrick.
My review of Brodrick’s The 6th Lamentation.
My review of The Gardens of the Dead by William Brodrick.
My review of A Whispered Name by William Brodrick.
My review of The Discourtesy of Death by William Brodrick.
1 comment:
I've enjoyed several of the books from the Father Anselm series. Now that my eyes allow for only limited reading, I was pleased to see that "Summary Justice" was available on Audible. Hopefully, in time, "Forced Confessions" will be available also.
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