Gagged & Bound

Trish Maguire #7

by Natasha Cooper

Barrister Trish Maguire tackles a thirty-year-old terrorism case when distinguished biographer, Beatrice Bowman, hires her to fight a libel claim by a new ennobled member of the House of Lords who says she misidentified him as one of the terrorists who killed a busload of young children.
Meanwhile, Trish’s old friend, Inspector Caro Lyalt, faces an impossible decision---blow the whistle that could end a colleague’s career (and jeopardize her own), or do nothing and never forgive herself. In the running for a fantastic new job within the police force, she learns that a South London crime family is paying off her biggest rival. The villains gag and suffocate anyone who tries to expose their secrets. If the allegations are false, she loses all hope of this job or any other, but if they are true and she does nothing, she’ll live with the guilt forever.
Trish is caught in the middle. As she and Caro help each other find the information they need, Caro’s top informant is shot. Then the body of a young woman turns up in a park, bound, gagged, and suffocated with all the trademarks of a mob killing. And someone is trying to use Trish’s twelve-year-old brother to force her to drop her inquiry. Picking her way through the maze of lies and threats, she brings danger terrifyingly close to herself and the people she loves.
In her seventh thrilling Trish Maguire mystery, Natasha Cooper explores the full destructive power of the wrong words spoken at the wrong time.

Genres: Mystery, Crime, Fiction, British Literature

368 pages, Hardcover

First published July 4, 2005

About the author

aka N.J. Cooper, Kate Hatfield, Clare Layton, Daphne Wright.

Natasha Cooper was Chairman of the Crime Writers' Association in 2000/2001. She reviews books in THE TIMES, THE TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT and the NEW LAW JOURNAL. She is the author of, among others, FAULT LINES and PREY TO ALL.

Reviews

[Shannon · Rating 2 out of 5]

An unpleasant title for a mediocre read. Actual rating, about 2.5 stars. This is a fairly standard Police Procedural, with the slight difference of having a barrister (lawyer who argues in court) who teams up with a police Inspector to solve mysteries. This is number seven of a series, but it is the first one I have read. It will, no doubt, also be the last I am willing to spend time on. It isn't really bad: there's a strong plot; two lines of investigation are going on at the same time and seem like they might overlap, but they never do except that they both cause our sleuths a lot of angst and fear. There is a great deal of Trish Maguire's (the barrister) personal life played out over the pages. Some of the paths I thought we were being led down turned out to just be the normal ups and downs of human togetherness. She has a complicated family, which is very common in this genre these days. I guess "normal" is just not exciting enough!
The Inspector, Caro Lyalt, is the more somber and resolute member of the detective team. Trish, despite all kinds of dire warnings, allows her half-brother to be put in jeopardy without seeming to realize what is happening. For a supposedly brainy legal practitioner, she is quite naive.
Speaking of her brother, who is 11 going-on-12, he is such a paragon of sensitivity and care giving that one wonders if the author has ever even met a child of this age! He is presented as having been a witness to a brutal crime as a toddler, which has left him emotionally fragile, yet he is the one who seems to be aware of the undertones in the adult's relationships and he worries and frets about their well-being in an entirely unbelievable way!
The clues regarding who is who and what they are involved in are given in a rather heavy-handed way, and yet the ending is far from satisfying. All-in-all a rather depressing read which left me feeling exasperated and wishing I could have the hours I spent reading it back!

[Karen · Rating 2 out of 5]

Trish Maguire is a barrister but no expert in libel law, but her head of Chambers desperately seeks help with the weeping, deeply worried Bee Bowman. Bee is being sued by Lord Tick, a new member of the House of Lords, over the use of his little known family nickname in a biography she has written about a young man caught up in the bombing of a bus load of small children. Typically, nothing ever happens in single events though, and Trish is also caught up in the problems of her dear friend Detective Inspector Caro Lyalt who, in the process of applying for a very high profile job promotion, is told that one of her fellow applicants could be in the pay of a notorious local crime family – the Slabbs.

In the process of investigating both events Trish and her young half-brother David are threatened and her love life hits rocky times because of the threats. A whistle-blower dies, a young woman's body is found, Bee's libel case gets complicated and the reach and brutality of the Slabbs is revealed. GAGGED & BOUND refers not just to the consequences of libel actions but also to the Slabbs preferred method of keeping control of the family and their minions.

The investigation of the libel case is an interesting plot point, as the convicted bomber has already committed suicide and the person with the most to lose from the case is the biographer and maybe the bomber's elderly mother. As Trish delves deeper into the circumstances it seems that the circumstances of the bombing were more complicated than revealed at his own trial.

GAGGED & BOUND is not the first book in the Trish Maquire series and whilst it was possible to follow the story itself in the book, a lot of the background to Trish, brother David and partner George is hinted at, but with insufficient detail to prevent a slight feeling of confusion on the part of the reader. Perhaps it was this that lead to a slight feeling of disconnection with the story and with Trish herself. The plot in GAGGED & BOUND is multi-threaded with the libel case and Bee's story interwoven in the narrative with Trish's searching out of connections between Caro's rival and the notorious Slabb family. Trish herself didn't quite do it for me though, maybe a bit too perfect, maybe a bit too much of a stretch to believe she would be so closely involved in some of the investigation lines, maybe it was the sudden revelations out of nowhere that supposedly resolved one of the threads. It would be worth trying GAGGED & BOUND, but you may want to go back to the earlier books to establish a connection with Trish first.

[J · Rating 4 out of 5]

MAY CONTAIN SPOILERS.

Trish Maguire rules!

This tale shows the ever-growing bond betw. Trish and David, the half-orphaned, half-brother she has taken in.

There were was so many plot lines, so skillfully interwoven:
Trish and David
Trish and longtime lover George
Trish and friend Caro (lesbian police officer)
Caro's professional advancement
Trish looking into Baiborn saga
(Jeremy & Baiborn who, years before, had made a political statement
that inadvertent had killed innocent kids on a school field trip)
bad guy threatening Trish by going after David (near-death pool
'accident')
Trish befriending Jeremy's old mother, Mrs. Marton


But a key plot line involved Caro's rival in the intra-police promotion game: John Crayley.

Just when the reader thinks Crayley (adopted out as infant, who turns out to be bio memberv of the infamous Slabb crime family) is a police mole for the Slabbs, Cooper knocks me way off balance - by revealing that Crayley is in fact a 'double agent' who has infiltrated Slabb gang by appearing to be a bad copper.

So sad that Crayley loses a woman he truly loves (fellow officer Stephanie) to do good, and that this woman died thinking Crayley was crooked.)

This left a bittersweet taste to the ending.

I wish I could be as awesome a professional/mother/friend/lover as Trish. She has no magical powers, but she's still a super hero -- so intuitive, creative, methodical, forgiving, articulate, etc. etc.!!

[Rosemary · Rating 3 out of 5]

Quick mystery read - the 'detective' is Trish Maguire - different as she is a barrister in London but has good friends, a good partner (non-live-in) and only some angst from a past event. She isn't an alcoholic, cares about people, etc. etc. A change from many murder mysteries. There are still enough plot surprises to make it interesting. i'll read some more Trish Maguire books.

[Ana · Rating 3 out of 5]

I did enjoy it, it was written pretty ok. I just think it was a little dull at some times. The subject was good, but the writer kept going around the story's tale, idk. I do like the main character, though. She's pretty well described and made.

[Jodi · Rating 3 out of 5]

Loads of strong, smart women characters. Some London scenery (I would have liked more). And two mysteries wrapped into one. This was definitely a thinking person's kind of mystery, and it retained my interest until the end.

[Rebecca · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is hands down the best Trish Maguire book I have read yet! Natasha Cooper really has a way of building suspense up until the last possible page and letting it explode.

[Craig · Rating 3 out of 5]

First I've read in this series, and it almost makes four stars. Interesting, fairly complex plot, and decently fleshed-out characters. It all works very well.

[Melanie Goldmund · Rating 4 out of 5]

Intelligent and tense. Trish Maguire is a great character.