Synopses & Reviews
Slander is award-winning author William Deverll's gripping new novel. Set in Seattle and British Columbia, it tells a hard-hitting story of shattered lives, of secrets long-kept and finally revealed, and of the often precarious road to justice.
Elizabeth Finnegan is a young lawyer, bright and headstrong, who finds herself locking horns, not for the first--or the last--time, with Hugh Vandergraaf, a brilliant and charismatic Supreme Court judge. Outraged by the lenient sentence Vandergraaf has just handed down to a convicted rapist, Elizabeth ignites a very public war of words with him both inside and outside the courtroom. When, a few days later, Elizabeth is visited in her office by a woman who makes a stunning claim against Vandergraaf, she takes on what promises to be the trial of her career, in spite of opposition from her firm's senior partners and the Attorney-General's office.
As Elizabeth builds her case against Vandergraaf, she pieces together a portrait of a brooding, ambitious man with powerful allies, who is seemingly addicted to sex and haunted by the demons of his past. But the trial, replete with complications and reluctant witnesses, takes a bizarre turn, and--in a very personal way--Elizabeth gets more than she bargained for.
Told from Elizabeth's point of view, Slander is an engrossing novel in which the genders are at ware and a feminist lawyer takes on the old boys' network. Dark, timely, and with a cast of vividly portrayed characters, Slander once again confirms William Deverell's reputation as one of Canada's most popular authors.
From the Hardcover edition.
About the Author
William Deverell’s first novel, Needles, won the $50,000 Seal Award, and, since then, he has published one work of non-fiction, Fatal Cruise, and ten further novels, including Trial of Passion, winner of the Hammett Prize for literary excellence in crime writing and Canada’s Arthur Ellis Award for Best Crime Novel. Deverell created the popular CBC Television series Street Legal and recreated its characters in a novel by that title. He is a founding member and past-president of the B.C. Civil Liberties Association, a member of PEN Canada, the Screen Writers Guild, and has twice been chair of the Writers’ Union of Canada. He winters in Costa Rica and spends his summers on Pender Island in B.C.