Aubrey Nye Hamilton Reviews: Denial: A Novel by Beverley McLachlin

 

From 2000 to 2017, Beverley McLachlin was Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Canada. She is the first woman to hold that position and the longest-serving Chief Justice in Canadian history. McLachlin is also the author of three legal thrillers about Vancouver defense attorney Jilly Truitt and a memoir, Truth Be Told, which won the prestigious Writers’ Trust Shaughnessy Cohen Prize for Political Writing and the Ottawa Book Award for Nonfiction. In 2018, McLachlin became a Companion of the Order of Canada, the highest honor within the Order.

In Denial (‎Simon & Schuster, 2021) the second book about Jilly Truitt, Jilly has finally reached the point in her legal practice that she does not have to take every case that comes along to keep the lights on. She can pick and choose and she tends to take only those cases that she knows she can win. So when Joseph Quentin asks her to defend his wife Vera, who has been accused of killing her very ill mother, Jilly’s instincts are to say no. Vera was alone in the house with her mother the night she died and there doesn’t seem to be any question about who administered the lethal dose of morphine. Quentin is a lawyer himself and well known as a fixer of all kinds of problems. If he can’t persuade his wife to take a plea deal, after two other lawyers have resigned in frustration, Jilly doesn’t know that she can help, but Quentin pressures her and she agrees to meet with Vera.

Vera convinces Jilly that she did not kill her mother, despite all the evidence against her, and Jilly agrees to take the case. The judge will not allow further delays in the trial process and Jilly has only three weeks to prepare a defense so she calls in an investigator and they go into overdrive. Jilly looks at the victim’s will which seems straightforward until she learns that a lawyer had visited her on her last day alive and no one knows why. Then she discovers a few holes in the police investigation which introduce an element of doubt. It was still a thin case and the prosecutor is a formidable courtroom presence who plays every trick in the legal book.

The Canadian court system is more similar to that of the U.S. than the English one so the process described here is not as difficult to follow as some of the English legal thrillers are. The forceful courtroom dialog could only be written by a subject matter expert. Jilly is a likable and sharp-witted protagonist, and her supportive staff make a good foil for her foibles. A human trafficking subplot is worked smoothly and all too credibly into the larger story. Fans of legal thrillers will want to add these books to their TBR lists.

·         Publisher: ‎Simon & Schuster (September 14, 2021)

·         Language: ‎English

·         Paperback: ‎384 pages

·         ISBN-10: ‎1982104996

·         ISBN-13: ‎978-1982104993

 

Amazon Associate Purchase Link: https://amzn.to/3DukEFa

 

Aubrey Nye Hamilton ©2025 

Aubrey Hamilton is a former librarian who works on Federal It projects by day and reads mysteries at night.