I grew up absolutely loving John Grisham novels, and Runaway Jury was one of my all time favourite legal thrillers. I loved the insight into the complexity of the justice system and I was fascinated by the idea of manipulating the outcome not through dazzling legal arguments but rather by controlling the ‘ordinary people’ tasked to make the decision. I haven’t read a lot of legal thrillers in a while, but Steve Cavanagh’s Thirteen reminded me of why I loved them so much in the first place.

In Runaway Jury, the trial was about the tobacco industry and the jury infiltration raised questions about corporate responsibility, government regulation and other larger scale justice issues. Cavanagh’s novel takes a different slant and introduces us to a serial killer who joins juries in order to manipulate the outcome on murders. Thirteen is the fourth in the Eddie Flynn series about a con man turned lawyer, and in this novel, Eddie is hired to defend a famous actor accused of murdering his wife and her lover in their bed. As Eddie and his colleagues investigate the murder, they realize that there may be ties to other murders in other cities, and that the real killer may be in the courtroom with them. I thought that the psychological profile on the killer’s motives could have been fleshed out a bit better (calling the team from Criminal Minds!), but overall, I found the killer and his infiltration of the justice system to be chilling.

I couldn’t put this book down and devoured it in a couple of days. I loved the legal tactics from Eddie and the prosecuting attorney, and the drama of their courtroom theatrics. I love the strategy that went into building and delivering their cases, and I was fascinated by the spot-on analysis of jury consultant Arnold Novoselic. The courtroom scenes and legal strategy meetings took me right back to me as a teenager when I was devouring John Grisham books and dreaming of becoming a lawyer myself.

I also loved the scenes from the serial killer’s perspective. He’s totally messed up and his priorities are definitely screwy, and it was fun to imagine who he was impersonating on the jury. I like that Cavanagh gives us a bit of insight into his childhood which gives some clarity to his motives without actually making him a sympathetic character. He’s pure evil, and almost gleeful in his cat-and-mouse game with Eddie Flynn. He’s a compelling villain, one for whom the game’s the thing, and it was fun to see how he reacts to finally meeting his match.

Thirteen reminds me of Grisham at his best, with the added thrill of a serial killer twist. It’s just pure fun, and highly recommended for fans of legal thrillers.

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Thank you to Hachette Book Group Canada for a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

Today, as part of Simon and Schuster Canada’s #TimelessTour blog tour of historical fiction, I’m interviewing Susanna Kearsley, author of Bellewether.

1. If you lived during the time period in your book, how do you think you would have fared and why?

2. If you lived in the future and were to write historical fiction about 2018, what do you think you would write about and why?

3.When you worked as a museum curator, was there a particular story about your museum that captivated you like Lydia and Jean-Philippe’s story did for Charley?

No, but the home of one of my United Empire Loyalist ancestors, on the east coast of Canada, is now a museum, and reading letters from that side of the family, as a child, gave me one of my earliest feelings of connection to my own past, so I’ve always had a special interest in filling in details of the lives lived in that house.

Celebrate historical fiction with the Timeless Tour, from April 16 – May 4!

For more information, visit www.timelesstour.ca.

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Thank you to Simon and Schuster Canada for the invitation to participate in this blog tour.

Today, for Simon and Schuster Canada’s #TimelessTour blog tour on historical fiction, I have a guest post by Susanna Kearsley, author of Belleweather. 

In Bellewether, Charley’s job at a museum leads her to getting caught up in the story of Lydia and the soldier from Montreal. For this guest post, Susanna Kearsley writes about her favourite museum, and what about it or its collections she finds so compelling.

Guest Post By Susanna Kearsley

Visiting museums, after having worked in that field, can be a bit of a busman’s holiday for me. While other visitors are walking around enjoying the exhibits, I’m noticing that the lux levels are too high, or that the artifacts aren’t properly supported in their display case, or that the flow of the exhibit space is all wrong, or not accessible enough; and even if all that is perfectly done, I’m watching the other visitors and feeling my blood pressure rise every time someone takes a flash photograph after being told not to (because the intensity of that flash, multiplied by the number of people who will do it, will inevitably degrade and ruin the piece you’re taking a photograph of, when you could just go and buy a postcard of it in the gift shop).

But when I travel for research, I still wander through them from time to time, and I have found that it usually isn’t the grand and impressive ones I love the best.

In St. Petersburg, Russia, for example, I spent some hours in the famous Hermitage Museum, with its sweeping, gilded staircases, palatial rooms, and priceless works of art. And it was beautiful. I found some portraits there that made me stop and look a moment in that quiet kind of way you only feel when you’re communing with a painting. It was memorable.

But a little while after that, I went across the river to the Menshikov Palace—a smaller museum, less well-known among tourists—and wandered through that with my mother, and that day was magic.

There was almost no one else there. Every room we walked into, it felt like the 18th century occupants had just left moments before. You could feel them around you, the women and men who had lived in those rooms—hear the swish of their skirts and the murmur of voices, a swift fall of steps in the shadows.

Maybe it’s because my own museum background is in historic houses, but most often those are my favourite museums—the places where, like at the Menshikov Palace, I feel a connection with people who’ve walked there before, in an earlier time.

Celebrate historical fiction with the Timeless Tour, from April 16 – May 4!

For more information, visit www.timelesstour.ca.

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Thank you to Simon and Schuster Canada for the invitation to participate in this blog tour.