
Sally Smith is a barrister and KC who has spent all her working life in the Inner Temple. After writing a biography of Sir Edward Marshall Hall KC, a renowned Edwardian barrister she retired from the bar to write fulltime.
A Case of Mice and Murder, her first novel, was inspired by the historic surroundings in which she lives and works and by the centuries of rich history in Inner Temple Archives and Library. This is the first in a series introducing the amateur and unwilling sleuth Sir Gabriel Ward KC.
At the Waterstones blog Smith tagged
five favotite legal thrillers ("sticking to what have become classics"). One title on the list:
A Certain Justice by P. D. James

A criminal barrister who is an expert on murder becomes the victim when she is found dead in her chambers wearing her blood-stained wig. Unlikeable and fiercely ambitious with a very colourful domestic life, there are plenty of candidates for murderer. Complex, extremely chilling and seriously good with a gut wrenching conclusion. And I really like the ambivalence of the title; what kind of certain is the justice in the book? Justice up to a point kind of ‘certain’, as the author suggests? Or absolutely ‘certain’ justice?
Read about
another entry on the list.
--Marshal Zeringue