P.D. James’s A Certain Justice and Gail Bowen’s Verdict in Blood

P.D. James’s A Certain Justice, her tenth novel, appeared in 1997; Canadian writer Gail Bowen’s sixth novel, Verdict in Blood, came out in 1998. They’re among the best novels by each author, and both deal with women and the practice of law in exceptionally thoughtful ways.

Venetia Aldridge, the barrister and murder victim in A Certain Justice, is an unsparing truth teller. Her ascent to the top of her profession, and particularly her ruthlessness and skill as a criminal defense lawyer, have made her countless enemies. Her personal life is no less complicated.

When she’s found stabbed to death in a grotesque staging in her own office, Adam Dalgliesh is summoned from Scotland Yard to investigate.

Alongside his able assisting officers, Kate Miskin and Piers Tarrant, who grew up in very different milieus, Dalgliesh probes the circumstances of Venetia’s life and death: her mutinous daughter, who at eighteen purports to have fallen in love with an unsavoury and possibly sociopathic young man that Venetia recently saved from a murder conviction; Venetia’s childhood at a brutal boarding school run by her sadistic father, whose reputation and livelihood were destroyed by a tragic scandal; and her recent affair with a rising politician with a now-pregnant wife.

Characteristically, James brings extraordinary empathy to her detailed portrayals of all of her characters, including the most unlikely of suspects, such as the law chambers’ two elderly cleaning women.

But despite Dalgliesh’s skilled handling of the investigation, he is unable to prevent further tragedies.

James’s novels famously focus on closed societies: a private, family-run museum; a medical clinic in an isolated manor home; the close-knit employees of a nuclear power station; a storied publishing house.

In A Certain Justice, despite the potentially sprawling nature of the characters’ geographic locations and personal origins, she sustains a strong sense of focus in her portrayal of the legal chamber’s denizens, who work closely together for decades without necessarily developing a sense of personal intimacy.

James evokes significant pathos in her sketches: a barrister confronting memory loss; a senior clerk aware of the grim prospect of retirement after a fruitful and happy work life; a young administrative assistant concealing her brother’s imprisonment from their grandmother.

And, too, James is skilled in portraying murder as a shocking affront to sensibilities, as well as to morality.

Venetia is described by nearly everyone who knew her as a brilliant lawyer, their veneration respectful rather than warm. The poignancy of her premature death, just as she was poised to become Head of Chambers, is conveyed powerfully, yet without sentimentality.

This is an engrossing, accomplished crime novel, but it’s also a profound psychological study with a deeply moral point of view. Venetia’s unshakable certainties, along with her belief that her unsurpassed grasp of legal procedure and cross-examination matter more than the guilt or innocence of her clients, prove fatal. James does not blame the victim, but she demonstrates that in this accomplished barrister’s life are the seeds of her own destruction.

Gail Bowen’s Regina, Saskatchewan-set series often deals with the law. The narrator-protagonist’s late husband and (later in the series than this volume) second husband are both depicted as outstanding lawyers, with one having served as the province’s Attorney General until his murder and the other among the most skilled criminal defense lawyers in town.

Bowen’s plots also frequently turn on legal ethical and moral issues, as in her novel The Last Good Day, in which defalcation (the misuse of a client’s funds) is central to the tragedy of a good but flawed man’s suicide.

In Verdict in Blood, Joanne Kilbourn’s close friend, indomitable retired teacher Hilda McCourt, is staying with Jo in order to attend a celebration of her long-time friend Justine Blackwell’s celebrated career on the bench.

Justine is self-created: even her name has been selected to fit the career and life she wanted for herself.

While her much older husband devoted himself to raising their three young daughters, Justine worked ferociously hard. Her husband’s sudden death created a rift in the family that has never healed, her daughters blaming her.

One is a noted child psychiatrist who is responsible for the care of a young man Jo knows well, the nephew of her romantic partner, Alex Kequahtooway, a detective; another is a celebrated singer with mysterious gaps in her life and career; and the third, most tragically, is a former television newscaster disfigured by a botched attempt at plastic surgery that she’d hoped would prolong her career.

None of the daughters seem especially distraught about Justine’s death, but when Jo visits the home she is startled to see evidence that in recent months the judge had allowed her troubled new acquaintances to damage her house and her prized possessions.

As a judge, Justine had long been known for sentences that were more punitive than merciful, but Jo learns that she had recently undergone a significant personal transformation, which has included partnering with a disquieting former convict to try to make amends for her past harshness. Inviting ex-cons into her home, however, may have cost Justine her life.

After Justine is found murdered near the hotel where she was fêted earlier that evening, Hilda acquires the unwelcome task of being her executor and determining which of the late judge’s two wills is binding: the one that leaves her estate to her three adult daughters, or a recent revision, in which Justine’s considerable fortune goes to a halfway house.

Because Justine had recently asked Hilda to help her determine whether she was suffering from cognitive impairments, the job is even more complex.

Jo tries to help, but when Hilda’s life is threatened, she realizes that much more is at stake than merely determining whether Justine was mentally fit at the time she changed her will.

Jo is also coping with the painful unravelling of her relationship with her lover, who blames her for not keeping his nephew, Eli, safe while he is away on a work assignment. While Jo is increasingly convinced that his psychiatrist is not treating him appropriately, Alex insists that Jo remove herself from the discussion of Eli’s care–and perhaps from their lives entirely.

This is a well-paced and suspenseful mystery novel, and Jo’s loyalties and affections are divided in complicated ways.

A highlight in Bowen’s long-running series, which will conclude this fall with a final novel published posthumously.