Title: CLEAR MY NAME
Expected publication: out now
My Rating: 🌟🌟🌟🌟
Book Description:
Innocent?
When Carrie was accused of brutally murdering her husband’s lover, she denied it. She denied it when they arrested her, when they put her in front of a jury, and when they sent her to prison.
Now she’s three years into a fifteen-year sentence, away from the daughter she loves and the life she had built. And she is still denying that she is to blame.
Guilty?
Tess Gilroy has devoted her life to righting wrongs. Through her job for Innocence UK, a charity which takes on alleged miscarriages of justice, she works tirelessly to uncover the truth.
But when she is asked to take Carrie’s case, Tess realises that if she is to help this woman, she must risk uncovering the secrets she has struggled a lifetime to hide . . .
When Carrie was accused of brutally murdering her husband’s lover, she denied it. She denied it when they arrested her, when they put her in front of a jury, and when they sent her to prison.
Now she’s three years into a fifteen-year sentence, away from the daughter she loves and the life she had built. And she is still denying that she is to blame.
Guilty?
Tess Gilroy has devoted her life to righting wrongs. Through her job for Innocence UK, a charity which takes on alleged miscarriages of justice, she works tirelessly to uncover the truth.
But when she is asked to take Carrie’s case, Tess realises that if she is to help this woman, she must risk uncovering the secrets she has struggled a lifetime to hide . . .
My musings:
What do you think is worse: a) someone getting away with a
crime they have committed, or b) someone getting wrongfully convicted for a
crime they didn’t commit? According to Paula Daly, the answer a majority of the
public voted for, was b. Yes, there are few things scarier than living out your
days in jail when you are completely innocent, a hapless victim of a shoddy
investigation and the justice system, framed for murder, unjustly convicted by
a jury of 12 who were eager to get back to their own lives. Perhaps this is one
of the reasons that makes Daly’s latest novel so compelling, because she
confronts us with this very possibility – that Carrie Kamara, serving a life
sentence in jail for the murder of her husband’s lover, is indeed innocent.
I’m not familiar with the British justice system, but seeing
that our is based on it, I am guessing its cogs turn very similarly to ours,
and once a case has been presented to the jury for a verdict it takes a lot to
overturn it. If you are the person rotting in jail, there would seem to be
little hope of ever finding someone who believes in your innocence, let alone one
prepared to fight for it. This is where Tess Gilroy comes in. Tess works for
Innocence UK, and organisation standing up and fighting for victims of the criminal
justice system, people who have been wrongfully convicted of crimes. It’s lucky
for Carrie that so far only male clients have been represented by the
organisation, which is trying to level the scales, otherwise her case may never
have caught their attention. Once Tess looks closely at the evidence, she
believes that Carrie could indeed be innocent – the difficult part will be
finding proof.
CLEAR MY NAME was one of those books where I instantly
warmed to the characters and felt invested in their fates. Tess, who seems like
a ruthless, no-nonsense investigator and yet has a past that still haunts her;
Avril, the newly appointed trainee who is shadowing Tess to learn from her
experience, and whose innocent belief in people makes a refreshing difference
from her older counterpart; Carrie, convicted of murder, who would have every
motive to kill her husband’s lover and yet still proclaims her innocence. Then
there are the nasty characters I loved to hate (every book needs those, too)
like Pete, Carrie’s unfaithful and conceited husband (why did she ever stay
with him?).
As with her previous books, I loved Daly’s writing style,
which immediately drew me into the story and brought it to life for me. Daly
has a keen eye for human behaviour, which lends life to each and every one of
her characters and created suspense as they were set on their collision course
on their search for truth – or to keep the truth hidden. I especially loved
Tess and Avril and have secret hopes that we may see them back in future books?
Maybe? Hopefully? As the two very different women work together to find new
clues and solve the mystery, their own secret hopes, dreams and demons brought
a depth to the story lacking in many other mysteries.
I picked up CLEAR MY NAME in the afternoon and read much too
late into the night because I could not put it down before finding out “just
one more clue”. And although I was not totally fond of the way things played
out, it certainly took me by surprise.
Summary:
All in all, CLEAR MY NAME was a compelling and original
thriller with the high quality writing we usually see in Paula Daly’s novels
and characters that got under my skin and who I would love to see back in
future novels. It was entertaining and intriguing, so I recommend allowing time
to get totally immersed, as you will be loathe to put it down once you start
reading. I enjoyed it very much and look forward to see what Daly comes up with
in her next book.
Thank
you to Netgalley and Random House UK for the free electronic copy of this novel and
for giving me the opportunity to provide an honest review.
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