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Summary
Summary
Paula Daly is widely acclaimed for her masterful plotting and thrilling page-turners. Now she delivers Clear My Name , a page-turning new thriller about an investigator, who in order to free her client, must confront secrets she has struggled a lifetime to hide.
When Carrie was accused of brutally murdering her husband's lover, she denied it. She denied it again when they found her blood inside his house, again when they put her in front of a jury, and again when they sent her to prison. Now she's three years into her fifteen-year sentence, gradually losing hope and separated from her pregnant daughter, but she is still maintaining her innocence. Tess is the only paid employee of Innocence UK, a charity that helps clear people wrongfully convicted of crimes, and which accepts Carrie's case. But can she trust Carrie? Tess is no starry-eyed recent grad--her assumption is that "they're all lying."
Meanwhile, Tess is also paired with Avril, a naïve young investigator-in-training, with the hope that by mentoring her, she can eventually double the group's investigative workload. But Tess unexpectedly bolts when she's tipped off to a witness that could possibly prove Carrie didn't commit the crime. While Tess and Avril work the case, re-interviewing witnesses and testing assumptions made at the time of the arrest, the tension ratchets up in both the case and Tess's personal life.
An innovative spin on the crime novel full of wicked twists readers won't see coming, Paula Daly's Clear My Name raises the stakes in a grave miscarriage of justice and proves that even in a cold case, things still run hot.
Author Notes
Paula Daly is the author of Just What Kind of Mother Are You? , Keep Your Friends Close , The Mistake I Made , The Trophy Child , and Open Your Eyes . Clear My Name is her sixth novel. She lives in North West England.
Reviews (3)
Publisher's Weekly Review
As the sole investigator for Innocence U.K., a British nonprofit fighting to free the wrongly convicted, Tess Gilroy, the heroine of this powerful thriller from Daly (Open Your Eyes), often feels her tasks are Sisyphean, but her latest assignment presents even greater challenges than usual. Tess must reexamine the evidence that sent middle-aged mother Carrie Kamara to prison for the stabbing murder four years earlier of her husband's mistress. For former probation officer Tess, the case literally hits too close to home. It forces her to return for the first time in decades to the faded northwestern coastal town of Morecambe, England, where the crime took place--and where Tess suffered childhood traumas from which she has been running ever since. As Tess searches for the break that could give Carrie back her life, the author skillfully explores the question of whether Tess can finally manage to do the same for herself. Daly's fans will welcome this gritty departure from her popular novels of domestic suspense. Agent: Jane Gregory, David Higham Assoc. (U.K.). (Sept.)
Kirkus Review
One woman, fighting to free another who may be wrongfully imprisoned, must confront the tragedies of her own past.Tess Gilroy enjoys her work with Innocence UK, a nonprofit organization that investigates past crimes with an eye to overturning wrongful convictions; she knows she has made a real difference in the lives of those she's helped. When the group votes to take on the case of Carrie Kamara, convicted of murdering her husband's lover four years earlier, Tess finds herself forced to return to the town of her childhood, the town she left behind and has tried to forget for most of her adult life. Carrie has always maintained her innocence; she admits that she confronted husband Pete's mistress (not his first) but that she never went inside the woman's house. Her blood, however, was found on an inside doorknob, and Carrie has never been able to explain how it got there. As Tess and her sidekick, junior investigator Avril Hughes, look to uncover police mistakes as well as possible explanations for the bloodstain, Tess finds herself confronting a piece of her past that she has tried very hard to avoid and forget. Daly's (Open Your Eyes, 2018, etc.) thrillers are engaging and well plotted; there is a nice mix of investigative process (driving the same route in different conditions in order to make or break an alibi, for example) as well as character development. Tess is a hard character who keeps people at a distance, but she's still easy to sympathize with; her exasperation with Avril, as well as their developing understanding, adds a nice layer to the story. The mystery itself is not terribly complex, however, and the ending feels a bit lackluster and anticlimatic.An easy summer read; engaging while it's in your hand, forgettable once you put it down. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Booklist Review
A sixth winner for Daly (after Open Your Eyes, 2018) with a timely theme, the incarceration of the wrongly convicted, at its core. Tess is an investigator for Innocence UK, a charity that reexamines cases where doubts remain, and her new client, Carrie, still holds to her innocence three years into her 15-year sentence for the brutal murder of her husband's lover. A seasoned pro, Tess creates an even playing ground by assuming that they're all lying, a message she passes on to a somewhat naive young woman named Avril whom she has been mentoring and whose presence she hopes will help increase the charity's caseload. Well, they are all lying, and the lies are revealed at an even pace, carrying the narrative forward to a suspenseful and surprising climax that readers will realize too late that they should have seen coming. Tess herself must confront secrets she has struggled desperately to hide in order to effect Carrie's release. Fans of domestic thrillers will find the revelations about families and the lengths that mothers and daughters will go to protect one another both disturbing and touching.--Jane Murphy Copyright 2010 Booklist
