The Murder Rule: A Novel

The Murder Rule is the fourth novel by award-winning, best-selling Australian author, Dervla McTiernan. Law student Hannah Rokeby leaves her mother Laura in Orono, Maine and travels to Charlottesville, Virginia to study for a semester at UVA. She has a convincing cover story and manages to get herself a trial position with The Innocence Project. Professor Robert Parekh takes her on despite her fairly blatant attempt to blackmail him into it, but she will have to prove her dedication to the cause.

Parekh's intimate team of three students is faced with an urgent case preparation: their latest client, Michael Dandridge, having served eleven years for the rape and murder of Sarah Fitzhugh in Yorktown is, due to certain technicalities, about to face trial once again. Within days, Hannah has manipulated the situation to her advantage, becoming one of Rob's team.

What isn't apparent to anyone on the team is that Hannah is not there to help prove Michael 's innocence; rather, she wants to see him incarcerated for as long as possible, and to this end, sets about surreptitiously sabotaging their efforts; she knows something about Michael Dandridge that they don't.

Laura Rokeby's journal from 1994, the year she worked as a maid in a Seal Harbor Hotel, describes her summer love affair with a rich young man, an affair that ends with a shocking tragedy.

McTiernan's first stand-alone novel has a plot that twists and turns and keeps the reader guessing right up to those jaw-dropping reveals. The felony murder laws and the inner workings of the Innocence Project add interest, and very little suspension of disbelief is required with this intriguing page-turner.

This unbiased review is from an uncorrected proof copy provided by NetGalley and Harper Collins