Dishonour

Helen Black grew up among a large extended family in Pontefract, a mining town in West Yorkshire. At 18 she went to Hull University where she went to gigs and drank a lot of lager. Three years later she left with holes in her Doc Martins, a tattoo on her shoulder and a degree in law. She moved to London in her twenties and trained to be a commercial lawyer. After qualifying, she changed direction, and has practised criminal and family law for over ten years, specialising in representing children in the care system. She now lives in Bedfordshire with her husband and young children.
 
This is my fifth "new John Grisham" of 2009, following on from David Kessler, Mark Gimenez, Scott Pratt and Joseph Teller. And whilst Helen Black is not male, the style of this book is definitely in the Grisham mould, so I'm comfortable with applying that tag.

Dishonour is the third book in the Lilly Valentine series, following on from Damaged Goods and A Place of Safety (both published in 2008).

Lilly Valentine is a family care lawyer. She is heavily pregnant, and has a lot of things going on in her life. When a young man comes to her for help after his teenage sister commits suicide, she gets involved straight away, but soon finds herself up against a wall of silence and mistrust. After spending too long busily going nowhere, she finds herself getting deeply involved in the case when the police turn up and arrest the dead girl's younger brother for her murder.

Luckily, a new assistant, Taslima, comes along at just the right time to help. Lilly and Taslima find themselves digging into the sinister world of a vigilante group vowing to protect the honour of the local community's women - and punishing those who stray. Soon, another girl disappears, and Lilly fears she knows what the consequences might be...
 
This is another great legal thriller. I've missed the previous 2 books in the series, but that didn't appear to be a hindrance here. The story feels very current, as many of the issues have been all over the news during 2009. It's nice to see an author not afraid to write a story revolving around honour killings. The book moves along at a swift pace and is a pretty fast read. Not everything is as it seems, and there are a nice few red herrings tossed in along the way.

Once again, the obvious, lazy journalistic comparison is with John Grisham, the king of the legal thriller, and this book holds up well in such exalted company. As well as the legal side of things, there's quite a bit of police procedural stuff in here too, so fans of police stories by authors like Mark Billingham, John Harvey and Graham Hurley will find much to entertain them.

Recommended for fans of Grisham, Mark Gimenez, Scott Pratt, Joseph Teller, Neil White, Mark Billingham, John Harvey and Graham Hurley.