Killing the Lawyers - Softcover

Hill-reginald

Softcover

ISBN 10: 000733480X ISBN 13: 9780007334803

Publisher: UK General Books, 2010

Synopsis

'Killing the Lawyers...is entertaining, sly, jokey...cynical, well written, and teems with sparkly dialogue - all the virtues we expect from Hill' Marcel Berlins The Times Joe Sixsmith, Luton's premier PI, is naturally on the side of the Law... Trouble is, the Law isn't always ready to return the compliment. When Joe turns to the town's top law firm for help in a dispute, he is subjected to nothing but abuse. He walks out, vowing to have vengeance. Then someone starts killing the partners one by one, and Joe is the main suspect. At the same time as facing murder charges, Joe is trying to discover who is threatening top athlete Zak Oto. Everyone looks suspicious, from her ex-con minder, Starbright Jones, to her own family. But Joe knows he's getting close when someone starts trying to kill him...

About this title

About the Author:

Reginald Hill was brought up in Cumbria, and has returned there after many years in Yorkshire. With his first crime novel, A Clubbable Woman, he was hailed as `the crime novel's best hope' and twenty years on he has more than fulfilled that prophecy.

From Kirkus Reviews:

Given even John Grisham's jaundiced view of the legal profession, it's not so surprising that Luton p.i. Joe Sixsmith's attempt to boost the insurance payout for his wrecked car by consulting Pollinger, Potter, Naysmith, Montaigne, and Iles should be met first with physical resistance (overdefensive Iles), then with brusque dismissal (curt Potter). But Joe gets the last word when Peter Potter's found dead shortly after throwing Joe out, and Sandra Iles--the most likely suspect in Joe's view--removes herself from contention by getting her neck equally broken. When Felix Naysmith gets attacked while he's on the phone with Joe, however, the coppers think the little shamus's involvement is too suspicious to amount to mere carelessness. Meantime, Joe's pressured from another quarter as well: Somebody who's been gently encouraging local track phenomenon Zak Oto to throw her big race New Year's Day if she wants her family--and now, evidently, her private eye--to go on living. The two cases never exactly grow together, but they overlap in some highly entertaining ways (think illicit romance and clerical error), and the denouement proves that certain key suspects were a lot more clever than they seemed. Joe's third (Born Guilty, 1995, etc.) isn't as funny as his best, but the creator of the immortal Dalziel and Pascoe could plot rings around the competition with one hand while ticking off the dead lawyers with the other. -- Copyright ©1997, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

About this edition

• Publisher: UK General Books
• Publication date: 2010
• ISBN 10: 000733480X
• ISBN 13: 9780007334803
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 288