You know that feeling when you find out something you already love is going to be available in a different colour or a different flavour and you can’t wait to try it? That’s precisely how I felt when I heard about The Murder Rule by Dervla McTiernan.
Dervla McTiernan
I am a huge fan of McTiernan’s Cormac Reilly series. I adore Cormac Reilly as a character and love the books for their complex, nuanced supporting characters, the deeply atmospheric Irish setting and the intricate, labyrinthine plots that always come together in a totally gripping conclusion. These are the ingredients I expect from a Dervla McTiernan novel and all are present in The Murder Rule (Irish setting notwithstanding). In short, The Murder Rule gave me everything I love about a Dervla McTiernan novel except in the brand new flavour of “American Legal Thriller”!
The Murder Rule tells a twisty, complicated story centred on a young woman, Hannah Rokeby, a law student who lives with her mother Laura (an alcoholic struggling with a traumatic past). Hannah is a very intriguing character – single minded, resourceful and clever, with a somewhat erratic moral compass. You don’t always like her but you can’t help but root for her! (This is incidentally one of my favourite character archetypes in crime fiction.) After blackmailing her way into an organisation called The Innocence Project, it is clear from the outset that Hannah’s motives have very little to do with exonerating innocent people and everything to do with vengeance.
Interspersed through the story are Laura’s diary entries, which shed light on Hannah’s motivations and lay the groundwork for a compelling tale of secrets and lies, violence and corruption – all building up to a deliciously dramatic and highly satisfying conclusion.
Truly, there’s only one thing better than getting a new book from one of your favourite authors and that’s discovering said author has written something a little bit different from their previous work and totally knocked it out of the park. That is precisely what Dervla McTiernan fans are going to to discover when they read The Murder Rule (probably in one sitting, because good luck putting this book down)!
—The Murder Rule by Dervla McTiernan (HarperCollins Australia) is out now.
The Murder Rule
Our Book of the Month!
First Rule: Make them like you. Second Rule: Make them need you. Third Rule: Make them pay.
They think I'm a young, idealistic law student, that I'm passionate about reforming a corrupt and brutal system. They think I'm working hard to impress them. They think I'm here to save an innocent man on death row.
They're wrong. I'm going to bury him...
About the Contributor
Sarah McDuling
Sarah McDuling is Booktopia's Category Manager for Children's and Young Adult Books. She has been in the bookselling game for almost a decade and a dedicated booklover since birth (potentially longer). At her happiest when reading a book, Sarah also enjoys talking/writing/tweeting about books. In her spare time, she often likes to buy a lot of books and take photographs of books. You can follow her on Twitter and Instragram @sarahmcduling
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