Proceed to Judgement

Sample

Sara Woods

Antony Maitland #28 The case against Harry Charlton was simple and strong. In his role as 'investigative journalist' he was alleged to have gained knowledge of a Top Secret project at the Fenton Laboratory, London, and to have sold this information to a Russian agent. The case rested on three main items: a conversation overheard by an independent witness; some very incriminating papers found in Charlton's flat; and a large unexplained payment into his bank account. Antony Maitland's clerk had already refused the brief, and it wasn't until an old (or perhaps it would be more accurate to say a very young) friend came into the picture that Maitland was persuaded to change his mind. He still didn't like the case, he doubted Charlton's innocence, and he didn't fancy taking on the security services when his client might, after all, be guilty of treason. Then murder was added to treason. It was obvious that the staff at the laboratory would have to be investigated, particularly those with an intimate knowledge of the project involved. Once again Maitland finds himself acting in the role of detective.

Sample

Sara Woods

Antony Maitland #23 Antony Maitland, barrister and very confidential detective, reluctantly journeys to a grey town in the English midlands to defend a young boy who is, on the face of it, guilty of murder and art theft. The boy is mysteriously unwilling to say anything on his own behalf. As long as the boy refused to speak there was no possible line of defense. In order to save his client from what, Maitland finally realizes, will be a gross miscarriage of justice, he has to piece together the boy's troubled past and in the process, stumbles across a web of criminal intent in which the boy is just one victim -- and Maitland is the other.

Sample

(by) Sara Woods

>The trial of Ellen Gray for murder comes early in the story, She is defended by Antony Maitland Q.C. and the jury's verdict surprises both Ellen and Antony >This murder has been committed in 1965. But it is evident to Antony that its motivation derives from a bizarre double-murder in 1946, when a woman and her lover had been shot dead by a jealous husband returning from the war; at least, that was the historical record. >Antony began to doubt the whole history. He began to think it odd that two murderers should have been found among the same small group, even if the crimes were nearly twenty years apart. So it is on this small group. the tight-knit clique who were friends in the forties, that his attention increasingly falls. >Then Antony Maitland moves from the role of barrister to that of detective, as he has done before. Supported by his wife Jenny, aided by his friend Roger Farrell (and as always derided by his formidable uncle. Sir Nicholas Harding Q.C.), he seeks solutions to the murders quite different from past convictions and police thinking. And at last, in a surprising and convincing denouement, he finds an answer.

Sample

Heron Carvic

"Miss Seeton is most embarrassed. Her every attempt at a portrait of little Effie Goffer has become a chilling picture of a corpse. Is Miss Seeton actually drawing a clue to a series of child murders in rural England? Scotland Yard thinks so, and wants Miss Seeton to turn from sketching ... to catching a killer skilled in a very deadly art. Retired art teacher Miss Seeton steps in where Scotland Yard stumbles. Armed with only her sketch pad and umbrella, she is every inch an eccentric English spinster and at every turn the most lovable and unlikely master of detection."--BOOK COVER.