Michelle Spring, The Night Lawyer

The Night Lawyer

Michelle Spring

Ballantine, December 2006, $24.95, 336 pp.

ISBN 0345437462

Lawyer Ellie Porter honestly thought her married lover was going to dump his wife to be with her. However, his wife got pregnant and he broke it off with her, causing her to have a nervous breakdown. She commits herself into a psychiatric hospital, and when she comes out she has to start over in her career. The only job she can get is THE NIGHT LAWYER for a tabloid paper the Chronicle, making sure the stories reporters write aren't libelous.

Carl Hewitt who notices Ellie getting out of the lift starts watching her because she is like a breath of fresh air in the polluted political arena. Jonathan, a colleague from work, befriends her, and an unknown co-worker Tristan Blacombe compliments her on her work. However, her personal life is in turmoil, as she feels someone is stalking her. Ellie also has a threatening letter delivered to her, and has a peeping tom watching her from behind some bushes on her lawn when she is semi-naked. Most frightening of all, someone broke into her house and she was never aware of it. If she doesn't get some answers soon, she will have another nervous breakdown.

Michelle Spring has written an extraordinary work of psychological suspense, with a Gothic foreboding atmosphere that sends a chill down the spines of the reader. The protagonist is trying to stay calm in the face of adversity, but as she feels increasingly threatened, she is determined to find out who is doing this to her and why. THE NIGHT LAWYER will be appreciated by those readers who like the works of Joy Fielding and Jody Picoult.