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Beyond The Bailey
Alice Ravenhall is a Queen’s Counsel, one of the most respected barristers in London and a successful prosecutor at the Old Bailey, but her glittering career has come at a cost. Divorced and with a newly empty nest, Alice finds herself disillusioned with a life spent incarcerating criminals for the Crown. So when a judge friend tips her off about the impending collapse of a murder trial, Alice feels compelled to investigate. What she will uncover is a twenty year-old secret and a web of betrayal that endangers more lives. Now Alice must work out who to trust, confront a killer and ensure her first attempt at pursuing justice outside the court-room isn’t also her last.
359 pages, Kindle Edition
Published October 31, 2022
About the author
Alan Devey
8 books3 followersThe son of a coal miner and a caterer, Alan Devey grew up working class in the divided England of the 1980s. In 2015, Alan completed a Creative Writing MA at London's Metropolitan University.
He now writes a regular blog on writing and other matters at his website and has self-published seven works of fiction. Alan is a regular presenter for the Comes With MP3s music show on Radio Woking as well as a committee member of the London Comedy Writers group.
He now writes a regular blog on writing and other matters at his website and has self-published seven works of fiction. Alan is a regular presenter for the Comes With MP3s music show on Radio Woking as well as a committee member of the London Comedy Writers group.
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Displaying 1 of 1 review
May 13, 2023
Beyond the Bailey is a finely crafted, intriguing and eminently readable work of crime fiction from the indefatigable Alan Devey. I have had the pleasure of reading quite a few of Mr Devey's novels, and always find them well paced and structured, as well as satisfyingly eclectic in their subject matter. His latest is no exception, a deftly plotted contemporary whodunnit and very possibly his most accomplished work yet.
Alice Ravenhall is a jaded QC (now KC, presumably) who has reached the apex of her career as a prosecutor for the Crown and has found her enthusiasm for her work ebbing away. Also ebbing away is her marriage; at the start of the book we find that she is separated from her husband, with whom she maintains a mostly amicable relationship. The book opens with Alice watching from the public gallery as Dengel Underwood, a black youth from a South London estate, is acquitted of a murder charge: youth worker Norman Wolstenhulme was stabbed after apparently developing an unhealthy fascination with the lad. Alice decides to turn PI and find the real killer, who is still at large (mostly due to the incompetence of the Detective in charge of the police investigation.) So Alice ventures 'Beyond the Bailey' to scrape away the layers from a botched investigation and dig down into the ties binding an unlikely group of characters: what links Dengel and his family to the middle-aged, white-collar Norman? And how is he connected to Dengel's absentee father and an early internet start-up that went bust? Where is Dengel's mother and why did she leave the country? Alice runs her own investigation with the help of some friends in the Met whilst trying to evade the unwelcome of attentions of DI Woolvett, who is determined to see Dengel behind bars again.
Despite Alice's ennui and disillusionment with the criminal justice system, Devey neatly avoids the well-worn tropes of the bitter and self-destructive antihero; Alice's life is not littered with empty Scotch bottles and blister packs of co-codamol. Instead she lives a mostly clean, well-balanced, life. Exactly what you'd expect of a competent QC in fact. And this balance and clarity keeps the plot in tight focus throughout. There is no tossing and slewing of viewpoints here, what we have is an honest book driven by an honest protagonist, so the reader can see Alice's investigation unfolding around her and posit their own suggestions as to how the events come together and who could possibly be behind the murder and why.
As you'd expect from an Alan Devey novel, the action unfolds at a steady canter, the prose crisp and unpretentious. The author's research sits lightly on the pages; this is no Grisham legal procedural, and is all the better for it. Instead we get enough detail of the barrister chambers and investigative processes to give ballast to the core murder mystery. And the backdrop is a well-sketched London, realistic and vibrant without being cliched or romanticised. I would expect no less from this author who well knows the myriad streets of the capital.
All-in-all a great read, intriguing and satisfying and written with the consummate skill of a journeyman novelist. And apparently this is the first in a series of novels featuring Alice Ravenhall: I say, bring them on!
Alice Ravenhall is a jaded QC (now KC, presumably) who has reached the apex of her career as a prosecutor for the Crown and has found her enthusiasm for her work ebbing away. Also ebbing away is her marriage; at the start of the book we find that she is separated from her husband, with whom she maintains a mostly amicable relationship. The book opens with Alice watching from the public gallery as Dengel Underwood, a black youth from a South London estate, is acquitted of a murder charge: youth worker Norman Wolstenhulme was stabbed after apparently developing an unhealthy fascination with the lad. Alice decides to turn PI and find the real killer, who is still at large (mostly due to the incompetence of the Detective in charge of the police investigation.) So Alice ventures 'Beyond the Bailey' to scrape away the layers from a botched investigation and dig down into the ties binding an unlikely group of characters: what links Dengel and his family to the middle-aged, white-collar Norman? And how is he connected to Dengel's absentee father and an early internet start-up that went bust? Where is Dengel's mother and why did she leave the country? Alice runs her own investigation with the help of some friends in the Met whilst trying to evade the unwelcome of attentions of DI Woolvett, who is determined to see Dengel behind bars again.
Despite Alice's ennui and disillusionment with the criminal justice system, Devey neatly avoids the well-worn tropes of the bitter and self-destructive antihero; Alice's life is not littered with empty Scotch bottles and blister packs of co-codamol. Instead she lives a mostly clean, well-balanced, life. Exactly what you'd expect of a competent QC in fact. And this balance and clarity keeps the plot in tight focus throughout. There is no tossing and slewing of viewpoints here, what we have is an honest book driven by an honest protagonist, so the reader can see Alice's investigation unfolding around her and posit their own suggestions as to how the events come together and who could possibly be behind the murder and why.
As you'd expect from an Alan Devey novel, the action unfolds at a steady canter, the prose crisp and unpretentious. The author's research sits lightly on the pages; this is no Grisham legal procedural, and is all the better for it. Instead we get enough detail of the barrister chambers and investigative processes to give ballast to the core murder mystery. And the backdrop is a well-sketched London, realistic and vibrant without being cliched or romanticised. I would expect no less from this author who well knows the myriad streets of the capital.
All-in-all a great read, intriguing and satisfying and written with the consummate skill of a journeyman novelist. And apparently this is the first in a series of novels featuring Alice Ravenhall: I say, bring them on!
Displaying 1 of 1 review