Ink of Blood

(I received this book for free as part of Goodreads First Reads giveaways).

(This review may contain spoilers).

Ideally, I’d give this book 3.5 stars, but since I can’t give half stars…

I’ve watched a lot of murder mysteries, but the only show revolving around court cases I could really get into was Shark. Therefore, my experience with what goes on in court is very limited – I don’t like to know who the murderer is from the start. (It’s why I could never get into Columbo).

This isn’t as much about the court itself, which I think was what managed to keep my attention throughout. That and the fact that the characters were realistic and human, even if I did think they made some silly mistakes at times.

I admit I don’t know much about what goes on in court, but one thing that particularly struck me was how adamant even the defence were that they had the right guy – based on what I would personally think was circumstantial evidence.

I do think that the politics of the court came across really well. I have no idea if the attitudes really are as sexist and racist as they come across in this book, but it’s true that not everyone has moved past certain ideas.

The intricacies of the court room came across really well in this book and the scenes from Alex’s perspective helped ensure I didn’t become bored with all of the case work being thrown around. I did think that Cassie was a bit free with the information she was giving out to everyone – I was under the impression that a case’s proceedings are confidential, or at least not things that should be talked about to the general public. I could be wrong, but it did strike me as being a bit inaccurate.

There’s clearly been a lot of thought that’s gone into this book. The writing in terms of the descriptions is good, but I did notice a lot of errors – including random capital letters and more than one person speaking in the same paragraph.

I’d be interested in reading more books by this author, if only for the simple fact I should have gone to bed ages ago – but something in this book kept me reading to the end.