The Night Lawyer: A Novel of Suspense [Hardcover]

Michelle Spring (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 28, 2006

Perfectly composed in a tailored skirt and jacket, Eleanor Porter walks confidently through the lobby of a gleaming skyscraper on London’s Isle of Dogs. The newly appointed “night lawyer” for the tabloid Chronicle, Eleanor has been hired to protect her employer from lawsuits. It’s a job she can do with her whole heart. After all, she knows what it’s like to be vulnerable.

Three years ago, after the violent death of her father and her abandonment by her married lover, Eleanor fell apart. But with determination and courage, and with the newfound discipline of karate, she made her way back to the land of the living: She shed pounds, reshaped her appearance, bought herself a modest home, and kept the memories at bay. Now, with the new job, she hopes to launch herself into happiness.

But one by one, problems emerge: the wayward young neighbor through whose walls Eleanor hears things she does not want to hear; the unsettling reappearance of her former lover; the security expert who catches her on camera in an intimate moment and decides that he is going to keep watching.

Even more disturbing, someone is stalking her, following her on the nighttime streets of London. Whoever it is has gone so far as to break into her house–even to sleep in her bed. Eleanor knows that she is in real trouble, but the danger is even worse than she can imagine. And this time, the damage may be beyond all repair.

In this white-knuckle novel of psychological suspense, Michelle Spring demonstrates her mastery at capturing the clean, well-lit façade of modern life–and the chaotic terrors that lurk just beneath the surface.

Editorial Reviews

From Booklist

After a bad breakup and an emotional breakdown, Londoner Ellie Porter has her life back on track. She has a promising new job as a night lawyer at a popular tabloid (it's her responsibility to vet the stories before the issue goes to press) and a flat with a garden in an up-and-coming neighborhood. But she still can't dismiss distressing memories from her past, namely the accident that killed her father some two decades before (was she really to blame?). Ellie's mother provides little comfort; she's too busy obsessing over her appearance to listen to her daughter's laments. And even Ellie's dogged pursuit of a brown belt in karate can't distract her from the strangely familiar stranger who's tracking her every move. Spring, a university professor whose own experiences with a stalker inspired her to write the award-winning Laura Principal mystery series, delivers a plot long on characterization but short on suspense. The best of the intriguing cast is Ellie herself, a contemplative redhead clinging to sanity in a world that seems destined to drive her mad. Allison Block
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Review

PRAISE FOR MICHELLE SPRING

The Night Lawyer

“Nail-biting suspense combines with genuinely thought-provoking characterization to make this one of the freshest thrillers in a long time.”
–Val McDermid, author of The Torment of Others

In the Midnight Hour

“Spring continues to combine psychological suspense with raw emotions for a gripping story that holds its secrets until the end.”
–Florida Sun-Sentinel

Nights in White Satin

“Spring uses the setting with a sharp sense of irony about the power of beautiful things to distract from their ugly interiors.”
–The New York Times Book Review

Standing in the Shadows

“A suspenseful thriller . . . truly startling.”
–Los Angeles Times

Every Breath You Take

“An auspicious debut for what promises to be an excellent series . . . This is a well-constructed and highly readable suspense tale with feminist overtones and terrific characters.”
–Toronto Globe and Mail

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 336 pages
• Publisher: Ballantine Books (November 28, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0345437462
• ISBN-13: 978-0345437464
• Product Dimensions: 6.5 x 1.1 x 9.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,562,549 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

11 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars unprincipaled, December 22, 2006

By 

Julia M. Walker (NY Finger Lakes) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Night Lawyer: A Novel of Suspense (Hardcover)

Michelle Spring, in her manifestation as author of the Laura Principal series, is one of my favorite mystery writers. I buy her books in hardback, which is how I ended up with The Night Lawyer on my hands. Alas! I spent weeks and weeks looking forward to this book's publication and saved it for my first reading after posting fall semester grades. And I couldn't believe the evidence of my eyes.

Oh, she did not write a chick lit book.

Yes, she did.

The mere absence of Laura Principal from Spring's pages is a reason for sadness, but that could have been a loss from which it would be possible to recover. After all, Ellie Porter might have been as interesting as the protagonists of Laurie R King's stand-alone novels. Spring, however, has changed not just characters, but genres. This is a romance. I kept waiting, waiting, waiting for it to turn into a mystery, but it stayed relentlessly in the pink genre, for all its hot orange dust-jacket.

Our heroine (definitely not a hero) Ellie Porter is tiny and feminine and hopelessly in love with a married man and recovering from a nervous breakdown (after married man dumped her) and victimized by a wicked mother and bossy friends and targeted by a stalker and asked out by every guy she meets and forced to cope with mean girls in the office place. And she cuts herself.

Please. This is a Lifetime movie.

Ellie has a pet, a hamster named Odysseus, cute and little. Even as I read about this adorable rodent, I know it is doomed to some generically gruesome end. Sadly, the hamster is appropriate in a pathetic way. Ellie is just not up to keeping a real pet -- too self-absorbed.

The breath-stopping suspense of the Laura Principal books is here morphed into low dread besieging poor little Ellie, she who is "tiny, but perfectly made," she of the cloud of hair and dusting of teeny freckles. Yes, she knows karate, but she doesn't like all that aggressive sparring they have to do, and -- although she's just so darned cute in her white pajamas -- neither she nor we feel her expertise could save her from all the mean men whose interest threatens her. (OK, she does have sex with a karate guy, but if you blink, you'll miss it.) Any elements of independence or self-confidence in Ellie seem to be there by mistake, leaching through from Spring's real hero, Laura. Even the archetypal transformation of the last 10 pages fails to rehabilitate Ellie's poor petite persona. And hearing her chant "all grown up now" at age 30 is deeply annoying.

For reasons passing my understanding, Spring chooses to narrate this in the present tense. Ellie comes and goes (fully half the novel is filled with her trips back and forth across the Isle of Dogs) and works and works out and sighs and cries all in the present tense. Is this a convention of the romance novel? It makes for very awkward reading: that which has happened, that which will happen, and that which is happening all inhabit the same temporal plain. If this device is intended to show us that Ellie is trapped in her own past, it's unnecessary. The endless iterations of her childhood fears more than accomplish that.

And then the syntax there is. "A chilly December day his birthday was, with a low gray ceiling of cloud, and Carl was in the back garden setting up a laundry line." What's up with that? No, it's not limited to narration about that one character, but pops up here and there and here, seemingly to no purpose. I keep expecting a red wheelbarrow and white chickens.

If you're looking for a murder mystery, keep looking. Try Laurie King or Deborah Crombie or the early Tanenbaum novels ghosted by Michael Gruber. Try Spring's Laura Principal books. Try for real women, not a cute and quivering victim.

6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A CHILLING RICH EVOCATION OF LONDON, June 10, 2007

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Gail Cooke (TX, USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Night Lawyer: A Novel of Suspense (Hardcover)

Michelle Spring deserves her reputation as a topnotch writer of psychological suspense (In the Midnight Hour, Nights in White Satin.) She goes full throttle again to deliver chills and nail biting tension with The Night Lawyer.

Ellie Porter is a young woman struggling to put her life back in order following a nervous breakdown. Abandonment by her married lover was the major cause of her illness, although she is also haunted by the murder of her father some twenty years ago. Slightly built she is blessed with long, curly reddish gold hair, and an eye catching figure. ""Though Ellie's scarcely aware of it, heads turn and grown men weaken when she shrugs off a shawl to reveal a well-cut black dress and a decolletage to die for."

She's pays scant attention to her assets as she concentrates on regaining mental health. Her mother, Anabel, is of little help, rather the opposite constantly harping on Ellie's weight gain, nagging that she'll never attract another man. That's the last thing Ellie wants. She turns to karate to boost her self-confidence, and in order to practice during the day she takes a night job.

This is not just any job, she's a night lawyer with London's Chronicle newspaper. She's the one responsible for catching anything that might be cause for legal action against the paper. Ellie's the Chronicle's only night lawyer, and she works alone.

She seems well on the road to recovery when her tranquility at home is interrupted by sounds coming through the wall from next door. It is Jessica, a young neighbor with a bent for self-mutilation, and Jessica's boyfriend, Tull, who has an aversion to honest labor. Almost against her will we see soft-hearted Ellie becoming involved in the young woman's troubled life.

That is but one drama that intrudes upon her world - Ellie believes she is being watched, stalked, and she is. Someone follows her in the dark of night when she leaves work. Who and why?

British author Spring richly evokes London, the Isle of Dogs, the Docklands. Her setting is described not only with telling detail but with affection. For this reader Ellie's character was not presented as clearly, yet suspense is well crafted as it moves, albeit slowly, to a startling finish.

- Gail Cooke

4.0 out of 5 stars Excellent, February 2, 2011

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hondutel - See all my reviews

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This review is from: The Night Lawyer: A Novel of Suspense (Kindle Edition)

This book had be hooked within the 1st couple of chapters. I lost much sleep trying to finish this book as I couldn't wait to find out what would happen next. The main character was well rounded and easy to imagine. This book was a wonderful read.