{"id":2377,"date":"2021-12-02T20:48:32","date_gmt":"2021-12-02T20:48:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/?p=2377"},"modified":"2023-04-02T23:04:16","modified_gmt":"2023-04-02T23:04:16","slug":"the-murder-rule","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/?p=2377","title":{"rendered":"The Murder Rule"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>This standalone novel, a break from McTiernan\u2019s Cormac Reilly series, is proof of the extraordinary depth and breadth she possesses as a writer. Hannah, a third year law student at the University of Maine, manages to bulldoze her way into spending a semester at the University of Virginia School of Law\u2019s Innocence Project, a true-to-life initiative that seeks exoneration for wrongfully convicted people in Virginia. She leaves behind her mother\u2014a fragile alcoholic\u2014as she attempts to thwart one of the Project\u2019s high profile cases: the release of Michael Dandridge, who\u2019s serving life imprisonment for rape and murder. Why does Hannah care? The secret lies in her mother\u2019s 1994 diary, passages of which are interspersed throughout the present-day narrative. Hannah\u2019s efforts to sabotage the case\u2014and the shocking facts she unearths in the process\u2014are the stuff of a classic thriller. But the emotional connections forged throughout the book give it added meaning. For a writer who has seemingly never lived in the United States, the locations, diction, and class signifiers are flawless. <strong>This novel can appeal to a wide range of readers, from suspense seekers to fans of legal thrillers to those who just want, as the British say, a cracking great read.<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This standalone novel, a break from McTiernan\u2019s Cormac Reilly series, is proof of the extraordinary depth and breadth she possesses as a writer. Hannah, a third year law student at&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2376,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[55,164,56],"class_list":["post-2377","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-review","tag-mystery-detective","tag-star","tag-women-sleuths"],"featured_image_src":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/formidable\/4\/Murder-Rule-400x400.jpg","featured_image_src_square":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/formidable\/4\/Murder-Rule-400x600.jpg","author_info":{"display_name":"Brian Kenney","author_link":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/?author=1"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2377","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2377"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2377\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/2376"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2377"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2377"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2377"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}