THE GARDENS OF THE DEAD

William Brodrick

Little, Brown, £14.99

Elisabeth Glendinning QC is haunted by the knowledge that she defended a guilty man who got away with his crime. Decades later, she devises an elaborate scheme to bring Graham Riley to justice, but meets an untimely death before her trap can close in on him. Fortunately, the meticulous barrister has put in place an elaborate plan B to address precisely this contingency – as if she knew she would die. She relies on Father Anselm, the junior barrister who acted with her on the original trial before abandoning the courtroom in favour of a monastery, to follow her clues – but is she asking too much of the monk?

Anselm the monk also appeared in Brodrick’s first book, the ‘Richard & Judy’ bestseller The Sixth Lamentation. As Brodrick himself was an Augustinian friar before leaving the order to become a practising barrister – the precise reverse of his main character – we can assume he knows what he is talking about when he describes monastic life.


The key witness to the original trial, George Bradshaw, now lives on the streets, his short-term memory shattered from a violent blow to the head. The case against Riley collapsed when Bradshaw walked out of the trial rather than answer Anselm’s seemingly innocuous question about why he never calls himself David, his real Christian name. Now it transpires that, years on, Elisabeth had been regularly meeting with Bradshaw, and he too will have a key part to play in her complex scheme. But what was she planning? Brodrick worked with the homeless before training at the bar, and his depiction of life on the streets also has the ring of truth.


Fast paced and well written, The Gardens of the Dead is a gripping story with an intricate plot that unveils itself piece by piece. It goes deeper than most thrillers, even venturing into the morals of courtroom advocacy. The characters are intriguing, though thanks to the flashbacks the Glendinning character easily outshines Anselm, despite being dead by page one. While the book’s barristers are admirable, courageous types, the instructing solicitor in the original trial, Mr Wyecliffe, is a greedy, devious, tatty little man. Let’s hope that is not also based on personal experience.