A Fatal Intervention — Bill Rogers

The fourth in the acclaimed Tom Caton series of Crime Novels. It's the last thing Rob Thornton, up and coming barrister with a reputation for prosecuting rapists and wife beaters, expects. An early morning knock on the door bringing a warrant for his arrest...on a charge of rape. Then the mysterious Angelita Covas retracts her accusation, and disappears. Haunted by her disappearance Rob sets out to find her. The trail leads to London where Rob is threatened at knife point by Angelita's Turkish landlord; warned off in Belgravia by the Russian Dimitri Izmailov, and kidnapped and threatened by James, the softly spoken Old Etonian who owns the Escort Agency where Anjelita worked. These events pale into insignificance when of a series of rhyming text messages arrive. Each message accompanies the death of someone connected to the barrister. It is clear that he is the victim of a vengeful stalker whose acts of apparent kindness are a form of escalating punishment. In subterranean tunnels beneath the heart of the city, where Mancunians sheltered from the Nazi bombs, Rob comes face to face with Angelita, the truth, and his nemesis. One of them must die; the choice is his. Given the current consumer demand for novels in the crime, thriller, and legal genres, the themes in this book have universal marketing appeal. False accusation by a mysterious and beautiful woman; roles reversed; an act of kindness returning to haunt. The plot is believable and suspenseful, the characters strong and sympathetically drawn, the settings vividly described, the psychological themes sensitively explored; everything meticulously researched. The originality lies in the way in which guilt and innocence are turned upon their heads, and sense can only be restored by a final act of intervention that is the ultimate test of the protagonist's courage, and the values that he holds most dear.