Claws out in race to the top

LIFE SENTENCEBy Patricia ClaytonThe Book Guild, 16.95Jeremy Fleming

This is primarily a book about an ambitious woman solicitor carving out a career in the law, but its author Patricia Clayton - herself a former barrister and now a locum solicitor - is clearly no feminist.

Unless, that is, we are supposed to be impressed by the manipulative, unpleasant, craven Chrissie, the novel's anti-heroine.

Ms Clayton's descriptive skills are fairly basic.

So, the reader has a good idea of what to expect of Chrissie by the end of the first page through the eyes of fellow partner Paul: 'She's like a cat, he thought, a sleek golden cat, always watching, waiting to jump.

And she's so sharp, focused, she scares me sometimes.

Thank God she's on my side.'

Chrissie does not wait too long before jumping on the rival partners in her law firm and disposing of them to make way for her own and her husband's ambitions.

The writing is sometimes a bit laborious, with long dreary internal monologues, while the characters are fairly incredible: Chrissie herself - complete with Onyx cigarette holder and icy glare - seems like a cross between a Jackie Collins seductress and a James Bond villain.

The background to this self-published novel follows a small City firm's progress through the Thatcherite boom.

Evans White Browning graduates from a crusty traditional firm with cigar-smoked boardroom full of old portraits of the founder partners, before being taken over by a US outfit, which strips out the dead wood and transports it to a gleaming office.

This is well-chosen for a legal drama, and it provides a useful veneer of credibility.

There is plenty of action to keep the reader engaged, from a swindling solicitor trying to hive off the partnership profits to the Caribbean, to a descent into madness by the main character.

But female lawyers who have worked hard to get to the top may be riled at the depiction of someone with so many screws loose making it.

If a man had written this there would be a price on his head.