About seven years ago, a memoir about life inside the courtroom written by an unknown junior barrister took the publishing world by storm. I have to say that I was intrigued by it but never got round to reading it. (At the time I was reading and interviewing Suffolk barrister Sarah Langford, so I felt sufficiently well informed.) But now The Secret Barrister has written about the criminal system in a fiction debut and I was very eager to read this. 

Three seventeen-year-old boys are accused of the brutal murder of an elderly teacher on New Year's Eve.

Each one denies that they did it, and claims the others were responsible. The three defence barristers each seek to persuade the jury that their client is not guilty. But they’re facing a prosecutor who needs to win the case.

It's written as an account of a court case. We feel as though we're present, learning only what is revealed in the trial. It is detailed but with little peripheral information - there are no distractions about the exterior life of the lawyers or the jury, for example. 

We're introduced to each defendant, and have sympathies for them in turn, believing in their stories, ultimately wondering who it is we should trust and wrongfooted time and again.

This is such a clever book which I found completely immersive and a convincing page-turner. I was gripped by every one of its 400+ pages. Excellent.