#BlogTour-‘Beyond Reasonable Doubt’ by Gary Bell

About the book…

Thanks to the amazing Emma at Damp Pebbles Book Tours for the blog tour invite-‘Beyond Reasonable Doubt’ by Gary Bell is available now in hardback and ebook formats.

Elliot Rook QC is one of the greatest barristers of his generation. 

He is also a complete fraud.

Elliot Rook is the epitome of a highly successful, old Etonian QC. Or so everyone believes. In fact, he is an ex-petty criminal with a past that he has spent decades keeping secret. Until now.

An unidentified young woman of Middle Eastern origin has been found murdered on the outskirts of Rook’s home town. Billy Barber – a violent football hooligan and white-supremacist – is accused of her murder. Barber insists that Rook must defend him. If Rook refuses, Barber will expose him, bringing crashing to the ground the life and career that Rook has spent his life building.

The truth is there for the finding. But at what cost?

This is a book by a man who has seen both sides of the law and it absolutely shows.

A series opener is a tricky thing to pull off,there is the temptation to lay all your cards out on the table yet Gary Bell does this with aplomb. He gives us enough of a backstory on his protaganist, Elliott Rook to whet out appetites, yet takes his time with his ‘Rookie’, his pupil Zara.

In this, Elliott’s first case since winning his silks, he takes on the defence of a criminal who has specifically requested his services. Billy Barber and his brothers have a history with Elliott and he threatens to bring down the fragile house of cards which Elliott has constructed…

Haunted by the victim in the case, a discarded, unamed teen with horrific injuries and defending the indefensible, this is a clear cut and engaging dissection of the UK justice system without ever patronising or being overly complex and dragging the reader away from the main themes of the story. Mixed-race girl, and an openly racist , white supremacist with previous convictions whose phone is tracked to the locality of the dumpsite. Discovered the day of the body to be slumped and insensible, naked and burning his bloody clothes in his backgarden, the evidence is available across the whole of the internet.

So how does Elliott and Zara bring justice to The Girl, who, on examination, appears to be one of many who have disappeared in Nottingham whilst Elliott faces unpalatable truths of his past?

I was concerned that the legalese would be way over my head, but Gary Bell does a fine job of explaining how defense works, how court cases works and marries it with a police procedural and very up to date social issues.

I would be interested to know if the character was named for the chess piece, rook, and if the way that they move represents the motives of Elliott and hope to read more of his and Zara’s cases in the near future! The way he took Zara under his wing, even gven his complex home and professional life was very moving.

About the author…

Born into a coal mining family, Gary Bell QC left school without any qualifications and was an apprentice mechanic, fork lift truck driver, production line worker, builder, fireman and door-to-door salesman, as well as a notorious football hooligan, before being arrested for fraud aged 18.

After a brief stint in prison he set off to seek fame and fortune abroad and, after two years drifting around Europe ended up penniless and homeless. He next enrolled in a FE College to study his O and A levels, and then went on to study law as a mature student at Bristol University where he ‘became’ an Old Etonian.

After graduating he spent a year as a litigation lawyer in Beverly Hills before coming back to England to become a barrister. He has spent over thirty years at the Bar, specialising in defending in major fraud and murder trials, becoming a QC in 2012.

Always on the look out for challenges and opportunities he has also been an award winning stand-up comedian; an after-dinner speaker (when at University he won several national debating competitions and was runner up in the World’s Humorous Debating Competition at Princeton); he has learned to fly a plane, hosted his own TV show (the Legalizer) on BBC1; writes regularly for national newspapers; has a column in The Spectator and wrote his best-selling autobiography, Animal QC.

Twitter @garybellqc

@BloomsburyBooks

@damppebbles