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Saturday 20 January 2018

Anatomy of a Scandal by Sarah Vaughan


A mix of first and third person POVs drives this story of a hard-nosed lawyer, Kate Woodcroft, intent on finding the charismatic James Whitehouse, an up-and-coming member of parliament, guilty of rape, an accusation made against him by the woman with whom he’d had a short affair. Sophie, his wife and university girlfriend, has to believe that everything he says, in court and out, is true. But her conviction is rocky, to say the least, because of THAT event in their final university year…

A couple of things irritated me…one, an odd ‘eh, ek, hn, hk, io, il, sy, SY' that ended most chapters. What on earth? Second…either the author or her editors seemed to have suddenly discovered the semicolon, the colon and the n dash and thought it would be a really jolly idea to put them in everywhere. And I mean EVERYWHERE, ninety-nine percent of the time incorrectly used. They really became a hurdle and a real annoyance. The text didn’t flow, and I very nearly put the book into my Kindle’s delete folder. 

I don’t think this enthralled me as much as it should have done. I would have liked more of the plot to be driven by a bit more dialogue rather than (sometimes tedious) narrative, but for all that, I enjoyed it, the way it was written and the little surprises along the way.

The plot was very credible and compelling, as was the style of writing, which was also insightful and intelligent.  Ultimately, I'm glad this book didn't end up in 'Deleted Items' before I finished it.

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