📖 Book Review ~ The Trial by Jo Spain

Quercus
25 April 2024

My thanks to the publisher for my copy of this book

2014, Dublin: at St Edmunds, an elite college on the outskirts of the city, twenty-year-old medical student Theo gets up one morning, leaving behind his sleeping girlfriend, Dani, and his studies - never to be seen again. With too many unanswered questions, Dani simply can't accept Theo's disappearance and reports him missing, even though no one else seems concerned, including Theo's father.

Ten years later, Dani returns to the college as a history professor. With her mother suffering from severe dementia, and her past at St Edmunds still haunting her, she's trying for a new start. But not all is as it seems behind the cloistered college walls - meanwhile, Dani is hiding secrets of her own.

📖 My Review..

It’s the start of another ordinary day at the prestigious college where Theo Laurent and his girlfriend Dani MacLochlainn are students. Leaving Dani sleeping Theo quietly gathers together his things and disappears from her life forever. Fast forward ten years and Dani has returned to St Edmunds as a history professor, and just as determined to discover what happened to Theo all those years ago. Dani soon discovers that there is more going on at St Edmunds than she could ever have imagined. Uncovering the mystery which surrounds the college and doing her investigation means that Dani interacts with those professors who were there in her student days and finds that not all of them are as they seem.

The Trial is a compelling thriller which had me turning the pages faster to see exactly what happened to Theo in 2014. The involvement of the college in some shady dealings of its own means that there is never a dull moment in the narrative. There are twists and turns aplenty and more than enough red herrings and nefarious characters to keep you guessing. 

Taut, tight and brilliantly imagined this is Jo Spain writing at her absolute best.

About the Author

Jo Spain is the author of the bestselling Inspector Tom Reynolds series and several international No. 1 bestselling standalone novels. Her first book, With Our Blessing, was a finalist in the 2015 Richard and Judy Search for a Bestseller.

Jo, a graduate of Trinity College Dublin, writes TV screenplays full-time. Her first crime series was broadcast on RTE in 2018 and she's currently involved in a number of TV developments including adaptations of her own novels. In 2021, she co-wrote Harry Wild, starring Jane Seymour, with the Emmy award-winning David Logan (airing 2022).

Jo lives in Dublin with her husband and four young children. In her spare time (she has four children, there is no spare time really) she likes to read. Her favourite authors include Pierre Lemaitre, Jo Nesbo, Liane Moriarty, Fred Vargas and Jodi Picoult. She also watches TV obsessively.

Jo thinks up her plots on long runs in the woods. Her husband sleeps with one eye open.

X @SpainJoanne

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