GUILTY NOT GUILTY

The husband and brother of an unstable woman who’s been strangled get into a battle royal over which of them will get the other convicted of her murder.

Fragile, childless art historian/curator Amelia Gordon-Russell always enjoyed cordial relations with her brother, High Court enforcement officer Joseph Bradbury, until three years ago, when their widowed mother, Mary Bradbury, provoked Joe by selling the family home and moving to smaller digs close to Amelia and her husband, freelance business consultant William Gordon-Russell, who doubles as an honorary steward at the Warwick racetrack. Even since that perceived slight, Joe’s been increasingly hostile to Bill and increasingly intent on turning Amelia against him. When Amelia is found strangled by a dog’s leash, Joe, who did the finding, is quick to accuse Bill—who’d unwisely acquired a police record for sex with a minor many years ago—of her murder and provide DS Dowdeswell of the Thames Valley Police with evidence against him. Dowdeswell and his cohort question Bill, question him again, hold him, release him, and give him many anxious hours before he produces an alibi that makes them give up on him. Now Bill, who’s been struggling mightily to interest Dowdeswell in Joe as a possible suspect, finds himself taken more seriously. Joe, spluttering his innocence as loudly as he’d ever trumpeted Bill’s guilt, finds himself first in a prison cell and then in the dock. The trial is suitably turbulent no matter who’s on the stand, and at times it seems there’ll never be a way to choose between the two men’s stories. But Francis (Crisis, 2018, etc.), pulling out one of the hoariest clichés in the genre, provides a final twist that combines ambiguity and decisiveness.

Virtually nothing about horses, despite the Francis byline, but a banquet of juicy he said, he said moments.