Without Prejudice - Softcover

Nicola Williams

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0747254826 ISBN 13: 9780747254829

Publisher: St. Martin's Press, 1998

Synopsis

Black, working class, a woman, Lee Mitchell has overcome all prejudice to become a barrister. All she needs now is a breakthrough case. Offered a huge City fraud trial, she discovers some disturbing facts and is forced to make a decision that could make or break her career.

About this title

Review:

Here's a debut legal thriller with a definite edge of truth, as black British criminal lawyer Nicola Williams takes us into the fascinating, frustrating world of her fictional counterpart, Lee Mitchell. Lee is resigned to working the cases that nobody else in her chambers wants, and occasionally being mistaken by court personnel and other lawyers for one of her criminal clients. Then she gets what at first seems to be a dream case--defending a high-profile financier on a shaky fraud charge. It's only after some digging that Mitchell realizes she and her client are being set up, and trying to do something about it opens up several very nasty cans of worms. Williams, who has been writing poetry (and winning prizes for it) since she was 14, has a cool, unique voice that marks her creation as a definite keeper. --Dick Adler

From Kirkus Reviews:

The British legal system is adversarial, but Guyanese-born barrister Leanne Mitchell's main enemies seem to be her clients and friends. Having just won acquittal for an obvious lowlife, she's ready for richer fare: Clive Omartian, whose family firm stands accused of shorting the books by 100,000, with Clive's half-brother Hector looking daggers at prodigal son Clive and their elderly father painstakingly urging peace and unity on both of them. Every brief in England wants the case, it seems--Lee's Head of Chambers, a scheming hack who'd take any route to an appointment as Queen's Counsel, certainly wouldn't turn it down--but they're all wrong, though Lee fails to realize why until Clive's got her in his grip. Meantime, the old school acquaintance she's talked into reporting her rape by an ex-lover is convinced that Lee doesn't really want justice for another black woman, and moves to take matters into her own hands. When half of Lee's allies turn Judas and the other half suffer for their loyalty, Lee begins to wonder how she'll ever survive her cases, let alone win any of them. Newcomer Williams deftly reveals a side of the British legal system as nasty as anything in the US: a world in which a barrister's fondest hope is to get thrown off a high-profile case and go home to bed. -- Copyright ©1998, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

About this edition

• Publisher: St. Martin's Press
• Publication date: 1998
• ISBN 10: 0747254826
• ISBN 13: 9780747254829
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 320