Reviews for Law And The Lady

The average rating for Law And The Lady based on 2 reviews is 3.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2014-06-05 00:00:00 Susanne Macmahon Bona fide Victorian melodrama! Lady detective! Cold case! Occasional Scottish legal theory! There are surprisingly many things in law that I have come across that make people who have not been brought up accepting them want to build a nuclear bunker and hide for eternity the moment they understand what they're really looking at. In this category I include things like English defamation law, the fact that we quietly haven't had habeus corpus in the UK for about the last decade (no really, I promise you), and the entire body and history of public international law. But, you know, the Scottish verdict of 'Not Proven' is the one that gets me. I genuinely can't see a positive side to having it - certainly not one that is compatible with the presumption of innocence which is so important to making trials fair. This being said, the concept of 'Not Proven', and the INCREDIBLY BLASE ABOUT IT attitude of some of the Scots lawyers I know, makes me break out in a cold sweat. Prime melodrama potential, then. And it absolutely delivered, or I thought so - suitably twisty and turny, masterfully plotted. This is my first foray into Wilkie Collins, and you several people who have insisted I read The Woman in White at some point, you were all right and once again I was wrong. I think this is a writer that I like. It was all going extremely well indeed. And then there was that guy. At the beginning of the book, there was a disclaimer from the author, to the effect of, "Okay, just saying, before you read this - not everyone is rational all the time. It's fiction, they're not all going to behave like you. Just bear it in mind before you decide to write me that letter." And I thought, how cute, no writer would get away with putting that in the front of their novel these days, which is true, but also when I got about two thirds of the way through TLATL, my skin was crawling and it was because of That Guy. The one with the incredible levels of emotional manipulation and that assault that happened. I genuinely can't tell how Wilkie Collins handled it. Was that handled well, but realistically? Was it handled badly, and I put the chills down my spine myself? I honestly can't tell. At any rate I don't think it was what he was driving at with the disclaimer, but it was what I thought of. I wonder how that'll work in another century. It was going to take a lot for me to not like this. Frankly I will take being this kind of predictable.

Review # 2 was written on 2019-12-31 00:00:00 Hakon Nottveit The Law and the Lady is a lesser-known sensational novel by Wilkie Collins. The story is simply a wife's quest to clear her husband from the "Scotch verdict" and establish his innocence. When I read the synopsis of the story, the legal aspect of the story appealed to me. A wife seeking to vindicate her husband could only mean that Collins has introduced yet another strong heroine to the readers. These two reasons made me very much interested in reading this work. The book is partly satisfying and partly disappointing. The story is interesting enough. And as the synopsis promised, I enjoyed the legal aspect of the story and also the mystery surrounding it. The headstrong and obstinate heroine brought life and energy to the story. The story was dramatic and suspenseful enough to keep me engaged. All good. But having read the major works of Collins, I can honestly say that this work lacked imagination. Being a work of Wilkie Collins, I expected more. I enjoyed the read of course. But I realized that sometimes there is a reason for a book to be less well known. :)