THE MURDER RULE
by Dervla McTiernan
William Morrow
Pub Date: May 10

Twists and turns galore will keep you pinned to the page of THE MURDER RULE, in which a law student -- seeking to revenge her mother -- gets involved in an Innocence Project. Only she wants the convicted man to stay behind bars after reading her mother's diary. Fast-paced and unpredictable, I could not put this one down!

Thanks to the author, William Morrow, and NetGalley for the ARC. Opinions are mine.

#TheMurderRule #DervlaMcTiernan #WilliamMorrow #NetGalley

Working in the legal field love the legal thrillers. This book was a great read! Hannah and her mother are very close. Laura. Hannah's mother, has a dark past and she has been hiding it from her daughter for many years; Hannah find her mother's old diary and has revealed some of those secrets and longs to right some wrongs from her mother's past. So one day Hannah decides after reading and article about a man on death row who was wrongly convicted, that she can make a difference.

Hannah takes a road trip and poses as a ideal law student so that she is able to work with the innocence project and this man on death row. While everyone there thinks she is working to help this man, she is really there to do the exact opposite. What really happens as she gets involved and digs deeper. Is she able to right those wrongs? Does she succeed in keeping him in prison on death row? OR will she help free him on a wrongful conviction after all? This book was full of twists and turns. I really enjoyed the storyline and the author did a fantastic job of keeping us guessing. This book will be released on May 10, 2022. Thank you to #HarperCollins #TheMurderRule #NetGalley for the ARC of this book.

For some reason, I've suddenly become enthralled with court case thrillers and this one is no different. While we don't spend a lot of time within the courtroom itself, we are entangled in twists and turns.

The summary of this book doesn't give too much away and I'd like to leave it that way. I will say that if you want a novel that gives you a look within the justice system, law school student drama, and a dash of murder and twists thrown in, this is the book for you.

It was a little slow to get into, but at about the 30% mark, I started wanting to pick the book up more and more, finally finishing it in less than 24 hours. Parts seemed a little far fetched to me, but overall it was an enjoyable read.

The main character, Hannah, leaves Uni in Maine to join The Innocence Project in Virginia. This program uses law students to review death or life sentences and look for evidence that might exonerate the prisoner. They are currently working the case of a man sentenced to life for rape and murder. Hannah uses lying to get one member of the team kicked off so she can take her place. Her reasons for this are revealed slowly, but the book is far-fetched. Too much trust is placed on third-year law students to be believable. Just a less than average read.

An incredible page turner, suspenseful, intelligent and characters you truly get to know even though it's a quick read. It was almost if Legally Blonde had more to be revengeful of and was a thriller, this would be it. You will be at the edge of your seat and fully invested, the end is satisfying while still wanting more from these characters.

In her first standalone novel available in the U.S., master of the twist McTiernan takes us on a ride through an Innocence Project—where someone wants to KEEP the convicted in prison—enough to send the reader down the proverbial rabbit hole of grey areas ethically and morally from the very first pages. It challenges the reader to ask “how far would you go to make your family feel vindicated?” However, this is more than a straightforward “justice” thriller. Be prepared to have to keep going until the last page once you start “Murder Rule.”

Full review closer to publication date!

I'd like to thank the publisher, William Morrow and Netgalley for providing me with a copy in exchange for an honest review.

I'm a big fan of McTiernan's Cormac Reilly books, and I always enjoy her crisp writing, great pacing, and interesting characters. With this standalone, I found myself disengaging from the characters and narrative as the story went along, but I think much of that could be chalked up to my general ambivalence about legal thrillers (plus, I missed the Irish setting). Ultimately, not my favorite of McTiernan's works, but still well worth a read.

Many thanks to the author, publisher, and NetGalley for the opportunity to read and review.

This book is full of tension and unexpected twists. Working on an Innocence Project does not turn out as expected. Who is lying and who is telling the truth? Is the local sheriff to be believed? Do rules apply? his is a very clever book that you will enjoy.

Thank you NetGalley for the Advanced Reader Copy of The Murder Rule by Dervla McTiernan and William Morrow, Publishers. All opinions are my own

5 stars ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️

Not only is Dervla McTiernan a great suspense writer she knows the law, Ireland or US. Making me want to read it all the more.

Hanna had lots of rules. Rule #1,2&3 plus the rules of law especially the Murder Rule. Hanna had us all on the edge at one point or another, I totally believed everything she told everybody including everything she told herself. Hanna is a strong advocate of correcting that small piece of a broken system. There are many stories to tell with this character and I for one look forward to her next case, and Dervla McTiernan’s next novel.

Strong core of events presented as interspersed present day chapters and past sequences of events written in diary form. A diary Hanna believes to be her own reason to complete the manifesto she believed to be true. A diary so we’ll constructed I thought about reading the diary chapters first then reading the book it’s self. But I didn’t……I’ve pre-ordered the audiobook as the author explains how the narrator was chosen for this US character.

Read it for yourself, find the true purpose, the reason to advocate with the ferocity of this US lass.

Another strong title by this author. Good plot and character development. Shines high above many other titles in this genre.

I’m a huge fan of McTiernan’s other novels, and love this one as well. That said, note that this is NOTHING LIKE her Cormac Reilly series — it’s a US-set legal thriller about a UVA law student inserting herself into an Innocence Project case because she believes the person they’re working to free is someone who did her family wrong years ago. Of course, there are tons of twists along the way.

The protagonist does not come across as entirely likable at first (deliberately), something I appreciate (but which I know irks a certain kind of thriller reader, so fair warning), but she’s got some great layers, and her relationship with her alcoholic mother (whose diary of her ‘90s years is interspersed present-day chapters for the first half of the novel) forms a great core of the story. Likewise, her friendships with her two fellow law students (both of whom catch on that she’s hiding something) help keep the book moving nicely, and the final courtroom scene is a great denouement.

I was genuinely surprised that McTiernan wrote a US-based novel, since she’s from Ireland and lives in Australia, but she gets things right (excluding one handwavey “I paid a hacker” moment of magic), and clearly did her research.

I have been a huge fan of Dervla Mctiernan since I read the Cormac Reilly series. Ao I as really excited for this one. But unlike the other series this one is a legal thriller. Our main character Hannah joins the Innocence Project which aims at giving justice to falsely accused death row prisoners. But she has ulterior motives for joining the project.
I enjoyed this fast paced legal thriller. I wanted to keep turning the pages and finish it in one sitting. My only problem was with the ending which was not 100% convincing. It seemed more fantastical than realistic and bar that this book was a solid thriller. Would definitely recommend for fans of Dervla Mctiernan

This is Dervla McTiernan’s fourth crime novel and a significant and quite brilliant departure from her earlier three, all of which were styled as police procedurals set in Ireland (with an added nod to the rich character focus so evident in Tana French’s work).

Ms. McTiernan is herself an Irish ex-pat living in Western Australia. Somewhat surprisingly, the author turns away from Ireland in this novel, setting her story in the U.S., and doubling down on the character emphasis. The effect is marvelous.

The Murder Rule is about a mother and a daughter. The latter —named Hannah— is a third-year law student (we’ve clearly got one foot in JohnGrishamland here) and the mom is a sickly woman (Laura) a bit too addicted to the drink.

Through most of the novel, the narrative shifts, chapter-to-chapter, between the two voices: the mother’s voice takes the form of a diary ostensibly written some twenty-plus years before the novel’s action commences. Hannah’s activity is a response to the diary, where the mother describes the murder of her lover by his supposedfriend and her violent rape by that same friend. The friend gets away with both crimes.

As it turns out, the friend Laura identifies is now a convicted murderer (of another victim). Hannah joins a group of do-gooder attorneys determined to have the friend’s conviction overturned, but with the intent of surreptitiously sabotaging their efforts.

So author McTiernan gives us a revenge plot, but loads it chock-full of marvelous twists and reversals. The Murder Rule is crime fiction at its best, combining both the suspense of a first-rate procedural with the courtroom authenticity of a top-of-the-heap legal thriller.

This is a brilliant book, easily the equal of McTiernan’s previous novels. Read it.

A fast-paced novel filled with righteousness, duplicity and seismic twists, The Murder Rule is a killer thriller that begs to be consumed in one sitting. Dervla McTiernan has produced an absorbing, unputdownable legal and psychological thriller that compels you to keep reading in pursuit of the truth.

Hannah Rokeby is a 3rd year law student who transfers from the University of Maine to the University of Virginia in order to volunteer for the Innocence Project, an organization run by noted Professor Robert Parekh, with the objective to exonerate falsely convicted and imprisoned individuals. Hannah is drawn to the high-profile case of Michael Dandridge, a man convicted on suspect evidence of raping and murdering a young mother eleven years ago. The team assigned to this case is full, but Hannah is motivated and not above trickery and deception to worm her way into the inner circle. Is she just that motivated to help save this innocent man from death row? Not quite. Her objective is more sinister. She wants to sabotage the case to make sure he doesn’t get out.

This story is a wonderful concept for a novel. It’s based in the reality that our justice system is flawed and sometimes incarcerates innocent people, requiring organizations like Bryan Stevenson’s Equal Justice Initiative to challenge the system and win freedom for the falsely convicted. It then adds in the juxtaposition of the idealism found in some college students with dreams of changing the world against the pragmatism and school of hard knocks that shapes the worldview of others. Next, it incorporates how the rich and powerful get to play by a different set of rules versus the poor and downtrodden. Lastly, it shows how important it is to keep an open mind to not allow confirmation bias to give you tunnel vision towards a singular outcome; that it’s critical to consider all available alternatives and explanations. So while this is a work of fiction, it is grounded in storylines and concepts that we experience in the real world. Resulting in The Murder Rule being more than a thriller – it’s an authentic mirror held up to reflect our society.

This may have been my first Dervla McTiernan novel, but it certainly won’t be my last. Well-written with incredible pacing and compelling characters, The Murder Rule captured my full attention early and never let go. Now I hope and wish for this book to kick off a new series, because it has massive potential with an unlimited number of miscarriages of justice storylines for a captivating protagonist like Hanna Rokeby to pursue.

Readers of McTiernan's previous series, set in Ireland, may be surprised by the change of venue for this stand-alone novel. A young woman in Maine is taking leave of her law school program to join an Innocence Project at another university, where she seeks to join the efforts to free a falsely convicted man from death row. But while she quickly establishes herself as an insightful legal mind, her real goal is to call the innocence in question. She thinks the man was responsible for a crime that affected

I enjoyed reading this book, but it required a serious suspension of disbelief. The plot is a high-wire act. It's a testament to the author's skill that it actually works at all.

I was able to read this book as an ARC from Netgalley. This legal thriller has a really interesting premise- what if a lawyer was trying to sink her own client? Hannah Rokeby sets out to join the Innocence Project at UVA under the guise of another optimistic legal student working to free someone from prison. She is motivated by a terrible secret from her mother’s past that she discovered in her mother’s diary. The book goes back and forth between the 1990’s and 2019. I also liked reading about what the secrets were from the past as Hannah must’ve when she found the diary. The end got a little rushed, with lots of key details coming quickly. But it was an interesting plot, and I would read another book about Hannah and what she is up to now.

A love a sneaky main character! This was a nicely paced mystery with some twists but not eye-rolling twists, Very enjoyable. Would like to see more from these characters!

A completely different kind of mystery from McTiernan’s Cormac Reilly series, which I gobble up, readers will be transfixed following a law student who becomes involved with a project to prove the innocence of a convicted murderer. While her own motives unfurl, her mother’s story is told in diary excerpts. Using her legal background to good effect, McTiernan’s pace never lags. A nuanced story with a tough, steely protagonist. One to be savored.

I love, love, love adult mystery/thrillers that I can recommend to my high school students. They will eat up this tale of delicious revenge gone wrong. The pacing is solid, the main character is developed well (supporting characters could use a bit more depth), and the ending is a terrific twist.