Print article   email story

TRIAL BY BLOOD (RANDOM HOUSE)

AUTHOR: JOHN MACKEN

Trial by Blood is scientist and author John Macken’s second book, but only the first of his I have read – which I plan to remedy soon. Set on London’s grimy streets, the skulduggery afoot in forensic scientist and ex-copper Reuben Maitland’s world is dangerous and all pervasive.

We meet Maitland after he has been fired from the police force’s elite forensic investigation unit following a scandal involving his wife and her lover. Forced out of the job he loves, he sets up an illegal laboratory in a building marked for demolition. From this lab he re-examines the work done by his former colleagues, as he believes that DNA evidence is being abused to convict suspects. He also reluctantly does some work for gangster Kieran Hobbs to pay the bills and when enigmatic police detective Sarah Hirst comes calling he does favours for her on the QT.

When Maitland gets an anonymous request to look into the case of Michael Brawn, a prisoner in Pentonville maximum-security prison, his interest is piqued. The allegation is that Brawn was convicted using the DNA of another man and he seems happy enough to stay in jail. Surely an innocent man would call for freedom?

While Maitland weighs up his options as far as Brawn goes, his former forensics unit is stumped by a rapist and murderer who leaves no forensics behind at all, almost impossible, except for someone in the know.

When Maitland decides to go into prison to get Brawn’s DNA to find out who he really is, he finds that getting in is one thing, but staying alive inside and then getting out again are something else entirely.

Macken puts his knowledge of laboratory chemicals and their explosive reactions when mixed to good use in this multi-plotted novel and anyone who loves CSI will thoroughly enjoy this forensic whodunit. Another author to add to your list if, like me, you are always scrounging for great crime fiction. Gayle Edmunds

Subscribe to the print edition of City Press