‘Bleed Out’ by Joan Brady

Published by Pocket Books 3rd March 2006.

ISBN 1-4165-0209-2

Springfield, Illinois, is famous in U.S. history. Abraham Lincoln moved to the city in 1837 and set up in various legal practices, was elected to the state legislature and to Congress, and was finally, in 1860, elected U.S. President. Springfield is, or should be, synonymous with all that is best in the U.S. political and justice systems.

In this story, Hugh Freyl is another respected Springfield lawyer, specialising in corporate law in a major firm bearing the name of one of Lincoln’s partners. Twenty-five years ago he was struck blind; devastating though this was he not only returned to his practice but became involved in the Illinois State Literacy in Prisons programme. One of the young offenders whom he encounters is fifteen-year-old David Marion who is serving a life sentence for the murder of his foster-father and foster-brother. David is functionally illiterate, an ‘urban savage’, product of a totally dysfunctional background and even further brutalised by his experiences in a notorious adult prison to which, as a juvenile, he ought not to have been sent. Freyl recognises David’s intelligence and not only undertakes his education but works, with eventual success, to have him freed. Then one night, in the library at his law firm, Hugh Freyl is battered to death.

David Marion, with his cold and hostile personality and his reputation for extreme violence, is the most obvious - indeed, the only - suspect. He is arrested, held for four days and then, having established an unimpeachable alibi, released without charge. But even so . . . with his history. . . ? It is in his interests to find out who did murder Hugh Freyl and with the aid of Stephanie Willis, Hugh’s former personal assistant and mistress, he sets out to do so. The story of his quest forms one of the narrative strands of this book, while the other, told as if from beyond the grave by Hugh himself, is the story of Hugh’s relationship with David and of the events in David’s life that have made him what he is. It is a measure of Brady’s brilliance as a writer that she does not yield to the temptation to make David likeable, let alone loveable. He is the complete reverse: cold, rejecting, possibly psychotic, subject to blackouts so that even he cannot be sure that he did not after all murder Hugh Freyl. We feel an abstract pity for him, and anger and disgust at Brady’s portrayal of a criminal justice system that veers from the lackadaisical and slipshod to the downright abusive and corrupt, and of a prison system that is unbelievably brutal and degrading. And as the story continues and David and Stephanie begin to uncover a complex web of corporate greed and fraud and political corruption and criminality, David does become more human. But his enemies are closing in on him and those whom he loves. . .

This is Brady’s first crime novel. It is extremely powerful and blazes with deep-felt anger at the abuses she describes. Her choice of Springfield, with its association with Lincoln, as a location is obviously deliberate: the contrast between what the justice and political systems are and what they should be is clear. Although the story is set in the USA., Brady now lives in England. She has written a compelling and well-structured book: an excellent read on anybody’s terms.

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Radmila May

Other books by Joan Brady: Émigré, Theory of War, The Unmaking of a Dancer, Death Comes for Peter Pan.

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