I received an ARC of, The Murder Rule, by Dervla McTieran. People are not always what the seem to be, unfortunately. Hannah is quite a character, this was a good read.

Hannah ran across her mother’s diary and grew up believing that her father was murdered by a friend of his before she was born. She learns that the Innocence Project Clinic, a group of lawyers, are working on the defense of the man who murdered her father. He had served 11 years in prison for another murder and claimed he was innocent. Hannah joined the Innocence Project with the intention of making sure her father’s murderer was not freed from prison. This novel has unforeseen twists and will hold your interest.

I seriously enjoyed this book!! I am a huge reader of psych thrillers and mysteries. This legal thriller was right up my alley. The character development was very well done especially with Hannah. The alternating time and POV story line was fantastically brought to life. Highly recommend!!

Thank you Netgalley and William Morrow for the copy of The Murder Rule. This book started out great and I really liked Hannah. She was smart and resourceful and was really trying to help her mom, who was a mess. I was impressed with how she wormed her way into the Innocence project and with how sneaky she was. It wasn’t really a great personality trait but it made for a colorful book character.
The writing in general didn’t really draw me in and I didn’t like the diary entries and even though they contained important plot points, they were boring to read. The storyline was intriguing but then it got pretty far-fetched.
3.5 stars rounded up to 4

At first I thought this was going to be to be a fairly straightforward mystery. Some one has been incarcerated for murder, an Innocent Project team wants to prove he was falsely accused, but one team member has ulterior motives and works against the mission. But it’ becomes a much deeper and layered story and once that onion starts getting peeled, brace yourself. It’s a smartly developed story that kept me on my toes.

Revenge is a powerful word and for law student Hannah Rokeby and her mother, Laura, it has been a part of their lives ever since Hannah read her Mother’s diary when she was a teenager. Laura feeds Hannah’s desire for revenge with tears and alcohol and pleas for understanding. Hannah was raised to find justice for her Mother but is it justice that she wields or is it really pure revenge for her less than truthful Mother.

Hannah is smart, crafty and sly and not above lying to achieve what she wants. She uses her abilities to inveigle her way on to The Innocent Project which will bring her closer to finally getting revenge for her Mother. The Innocent Project takes on the cases of prisoners who were failed by the system and attempts to get them released from prison. The Project has taken on a new case, one that greatly interests Hannah.

Wonderful storyline and character development, especially Hannah. She’s driven and fierce and yet she is vulnerable when it comes to Laura, her Mother, who knows exactly how to control her. Great book!

I received an ecopy of this book in exchange for an honest review. Thank you to Scene of the Crime, William Morrow, NetGalley and the author Dervla McTiernan.

ARC book provided by NetGalley and the publisher in exchange for an honest review.

“Murder Rule” is the first book I’ve read by this author. The first half of the novel works through a dual timeline. In 1994 via Laura’s journal and in 2019 we follow the story of Hannah, Laura’s daughter. As the events in 1994 unfold, the reader quickly learns why Hannah is pursuing work through the Innocence Project in 2019. However, Hannah isn’t working along with the members of the Innocence Project to free inmate Michael Dandridge: she is fighting to keep him behind bars.

The first half of the novel speeds along through the timelines, setting up the novel nicely. The second half follows Hannah’s timeline exclusively as she fights to sink Dandridge’s case. However, things aren’t always as they seem, and Hannah is quickly questioning what she knows and how she will proceed. The ending comes to quick conclusion worthy of a legal procedural television episode. Everything wraps up with a nice bow, leading to a firm conclusion that answers every question.

The book was a quick easy read. I found myself fully engaged in the first half and speeding through the second half, eager to see what was going to happen. As some other reviewers have noted, the ending really did require some suspension of disbelief. Part of my disbelief came from my personal background in the legal field, which really brought some pieces of the ending into question. However, the twists and turns of this book along with the author’s easy writing style made up for it. The fully concluded ending was satisfying and wrapped up all the loose threads of the story.

Overall, this book was a solid 4 star for me. When I feel myself tearing through a novel dying to see how it’s going to end, I know it is a good book. I think this would be a good book for fans of thrillers and readers new to the genre. If you’re familiar with the legal process, just know that you’ll need to take this book with a grain of salt. It is worth it, though, for this original twisty book. Pick up a copy and join Hannah for the ride.

Expertly paced legal thriller. Very entertaining. Hannah, the main character, is complex and interesting. Even when she's doing things perhaps she should not, you find yourself rooting for her.

"First Rule: Make them like you.

Second Rule: Make them need you.

Third Rule: Make them pay.

They think I’m a young, idealistic law student, that I’m passionate about reforming a corrupt and brutal system.

They think I’m working hard to impress them.

They think I’m here to save an innocent man on death row.

They're wrong. I’m going to bury him."

Thanks to NetGalley for the Free ARC in exchange for my honest review.

I have read this author’s Cormac Reilly books and this is not part of that series.

This is about the Innocence Project in Virginia. The inmate must be claiming to be innocent and not just trying to get off on a technicality. He must be factually innocent. That is just one of the criteria necessary.

Hannah is a law student in Maine and applies to volunteer with the project. She gets on the one case that is very important to her. The title of the book is about the felony murder charges that are so controversial. When someone accidentally kills someone while in the process of committing another crime they can be charged with murder. Sometimes the accomplices can be charged with murder even if they weren’t present when the death took place.

The chapters are told from Hannah’s point of view and from her mother Laura’s diary entries. This is a story about revenge. The character of Hannah is well developed.

The hearing at the end is very thrilling even though you might have to suspend belief a little. But all in all it was a very interesting book. I will keep reading Dervla McTiernan’s books.

Hannah Rokeby is a 3rd year law student who transfers from a university in Maine to UVA to assist the Innocence Project after finding an article in Vanity Fair about the lawyer who runs the project and their upcoming case with client Michael Dandridge. Hannah is determined to make sure they fail to get Dandridge released. Why she is so determined is slowly revealed over the course of the novel through diary entries written by Hannah's mother, Laura, dating from the summer of 1994.

Hannah is smart and savvy and seemingly steps ahead of the law team she's working with until one night, things come to a head in a small town bar.

This novel starts slow and feels very procedural, but quickly picks up pace and was compulsively readable. Things hit a frenetic pace and the resolution comes quickly, with Hannah making some questionable choices, the consequences of which we do not see her dealing with before the novel ends.

All that said this is high 4 🌟 for me. Fast paced, well developed and twisty but still believable. I enjoyed every page and I'm typically not a thriller fan but this one was more of a mystery with thriller tensions.

Thank you to William Morrow and Book Club Girl and NetGalley for the electronic ARC of this novel for review.

If you’re looking for the psychological thriller that will keep you reading “just one more chapter before bedtime” - this is it!

Hannah, a 3rd year law student, transfers to the law school that sponsors The Innocence Project to release wrongfully-convicted prisoners from death row. She has an agenda - to get on the team for a particular case of personal interest...but the professor leading the project doesn’t know that. All he sees is a very dedicated, determined volunteer. And when a slot unexpectedly opens on the project team, Hannah is in.

Told from alternating viewpoints (Hannah in the present and her mom several years earlier), the story is engaging and the characters are compelling. Filled with twists you won’t see coming, this story will keep you reaching for just one more chapter before you call it a day.

I don’t give 5-star reviews lightly, but this one is a solid 4.5-star book so I’ll round up. McTiernan is a great writer and weaves an interesting tale that will have you checking out her other books when this one is finished. Buy it, you won’t regret it!

*Thanks to the publisher for the chance to review and early ARC in exchange for the review!

This is a suspenseful. psychological thriller that grabbed my attention from the start and kept me turning pages long into the night. It is also a tightly-plotted legal thriller whose story unfolds at a lightning pace with twists throughout.

Hannah, a University of Maine law student, has discovered her mother's old diary that reveals long held secrets about her father and the period in her mother's life when they met. It also discloses information about her father's friend Michael that is far from flattering. Hannah finds out that Michael, who has been jailed for the past eleven years, is the focus of a Virginia law school's innocence project. Based on the information gleaned from her mother's diary, Hannah transfers to the Virginia school and bribes her way onto the legal team representing Michael. Her goal: to stop the legal team working to free Michael.

Initially alternating between her mother's diary entries and Hannah's efforts to land a place on Michael's legal team, the story follows Hannah's misgivings about her goal of derailing the legal team. Is Michael truly innocent of the murder charge against him and, if so, should his past factor into her goal of keeping in prison? It's a dilemma facing Hannah and readers.

I found the moral and ethical dilemmas that Hannah faces intriguing. I was on the fence for most of the book about what action she should take but I was always rooting for her. If you like legal dramas and psychological whodunits, this is a book for you.

This suspense novel follows law student Hannah as she transfers universities with the goal of joining the Innocence Project - a project dedicated to overturning wrongful convictions and freeing innocent people from prison. On the outside, she is a typical, idealistic law student who wants to see justice win out. But her true intentions for joining the project are more sinister. The project's main case - a man convicted of the rape and murder of a young mother - hits a personal spot for Hannah and while the rest of the team is fighting to free this man, Hannah is fighting to keep him locked up for good.

TW/CW: police brutality/corruption, alcoholism, rape

The main story takes place over the course of about a week so we don't have a lot of time to dilly-dally. I really enjoyed the characters in this and was surprised by the amount of character development McTiernan was able to squeeze in. All of the development felt really natural and there wasn't any time that felt info-dumpy to me. As this is a legal suspense, we do get some poetic waxing on the state of the United States justice system and these conversations are a pretty good window into these characters and their mindsets. I really liked the side characters and how much information we were able to get about them in a very short amount of time. I think McTiernan does a great job of having just the right amount of small talk scenes to get some background information to the reader but not too many that it distracts from the main plot. I do wish we had seen more of Hannah's background and how she grew up. We get little snippets here and there but I never had enough time to really sit with those situations before the plot kept moving on to the next point. Hannah's childhood and her relationship with her mom are so integral to the plot but we get so little of those interactions actually on the page that I didn't feel like they had the emotional weight they should have.

The twists and reveals come late in this book, but when they hit it is perfection. This book utilizes my favorite trope in a fantastic way (but that trope would be a spoiler). There were a couple of reveals that felt like they were a little bit of a cheat because they were not at all telegraphed to the reader ahead of time and they should have been. We were close enough to the characters involved in the reveal that we should have gotten some sort of feeling that something wasn't quite right. Instead, the reader is lead to believe that X is true for quite a while only to have the rug pulled out from under us. It was the type of reveal where, when thinking back, the reader was specifically not shown the situations that would have given the reveal away early. I didn't want to be able to guess the reveal, I just wanted more of a feeling that there was something else going on that the reader didn't know about so that when the reveal did happen, I still could have a feeling of 'ah-ha, I knew there was something going on!'

The tension in the second half was fantastic and there were some truly pulse-racing moments. The first half is a bit slow paced and low tension as the characters are starting to gather witness statements and double check paperwork. I think the tension in the first half could have really been upped if we saw some more of Hannah's scheming and some of the more hands-on ways that she was planning to sabotage the case. It feels, at times, like Hannah is just there hoping that they'll find evidence that the man is guilty but then we do see her take some definitive actions at other times. Seeing her take more of these steps on page could have really upped the tension as we would have more easily seen Hannah as infiltrating the project. In any case, once we get past the midpoint reveal, everything ramps up. The stark difference in mood between the two halves might be a little too much for some readers to find believable, but I found McTiernan toed the line just right for my personal tastes. The second half is where the story transitions from a more clerical-heavy legal suspense to straight up small town thriller and I absolutely loved it. I also loved how these tension-upping reveals we get are mentioned in passing a few times earlier in the story so instead of these changes coming out of nowhere, it feels like a puzzle piece finally falling into place.

The main plot takes place in 2019 but we also get some chapters from Hannah's mom's journal from when she was growing up. It isn't initially clear how, exactly, these journal entries are connected to the main plot, but by the halfway point, it is very clear. I thought the journal was used really well to give us a quick drop of exposition and then get us back to the main story. If this was told in flashbacks instead, I think it would have dragged the pacing down a bit. It was interesting to see the differences between Hannah's mom we see current day and this version in the journal. I also enjoyed the difference in voice between Hannah's chapters and the journal although the journal chapters did feel more juvenile than I would have expected. I wish we would have seen some more journal entries - maybe Hannah's from when she was growing up? - as a way to flesh out some of the missing background that I wanted.

Overall, this was a really great legal suspense/thriller. I think these characters were all perfectly cast and I was genuinely shocked at some of the reveals we got. I do wish we had gone further with some of the character backstories and started building the tension a little earlier, but all in all this was a solid read.

Thanks to NetGalley and William Morrow for the ARC

Expected publication date is May 10, 2022

My first read from this author and it’s a good one! I loved the premise, a young law student starts volunteering at the Innocence Project at University of Virginia, for very personal reasons.

Hannah has a connection to one of the cases the group is working on, and she strategically figures out a way to join the defense team. None of them know that she is sabotaging their efforts due to a past crime that horribly impacted her mother, Laura.

As the team investigates evidence and conducts interviews, Hannah gets even closer to the case. The stakes are high in this one and I had to pay attention to keep up! This one was suspenseful, and I wondered if Hannah would ultimately be successful in her quest to find justice for her mother.

The story alternates as we get Laura’s side of the story through a diary that she kept. This one is filled with secrets and deception. There were definitely a few twists that I didn’t see coming and I would read this author again!

The plot twists will leave you breathless. Hannah is such an interesting and complex character. I really enjoyed this thriller. I finished this book in 1 day. I’ll be grabbing McTiernan’s books asap. She knows how to build up the plot.

It’s 2019 and Hannah is a young law student and she has made a decision nothing will stop her from joining the Innocence Project, that Professor Rob Parekh at the University of Virginia runs. It’s obvious Hannah has an ulterior motive and the answer to why she needs to join is written in her mother’s diary from 1994.
While we get glimpses at the diary we soon uncover that her mother worked as a maid and this is where she met the wealthy Tom Spencer and his friend Michael Dandridge.
Now in 2019 Michael Dandridge is in prison for a rape and murder, but he insists he’s innocent. The Innocence Project is looking at his case because it appears that his case was mishandled.
Hannah quickly lands herself a spot on the high-profile death row case of Michael Dandridge and she is determined to make sure he doesn’t get out even, if that means throwing a few issues into the case file. We follow her as she helps his team of lawyers and it’s soon obvious someone isn’t telling the whole truth but who? The more blurred the lines become, it appears she has more questions than answers. Will they realize who she really is and will she find the truth she’s so desperately looking for? I loved this book the author did an amazing job twisting and turning the story and the ending shocked me! I enjoyed the build up and the characters! Five stars!

Solid 4 stars for the genre

I really enjoyed this book. I am a sucker for multiple POV’s
This story starts slow but really gains momentum about half way through. I like the twists and the characters as well. Overall a really enjoyable read.

Heck, yeah!

When Hannah Rokeby stumbles upon an article in Vanity Fair about what was happening at the Innocence Project at the University of Virginia, a plan is set in motion.

Professor Rob Parekh who runs The Innocence Project at the University is working to free Michael Dandridge, a man convicted of the brutal rape and murder of Sarah Fitzhugh.

Hannah cannot let that happen.

You see, Hannah’s mother, Laura has been running from this man for over 20 years-the details of WHY, chronicled in the diaries she wrote when she was just 19 years old.

Details which led her mother down a lonely path of alcoholism and distrust.

So Hannah blackmails the Professor to make sure that a spot for her will become available in the “already full” program, and sets about to make herself invaluable to the team.

While she is convincing the others that she is passionate about saving this man who they believe is innocent- she is working behind the scenes to make sure that he will NOT walk free.

The story alternates between Hannah, in the present, working with the project and Laura’s diary entries from 1994.

While I doubt that the newest member of the Innocence Project team, would so easily get to take center stage on the case, in the many ways that she does, just go with the ride and enjoy the entertaining story!

After all, aren’t we all looking for a book, where we yell “Heck, yeah” at the end? 😉

Dervla McTiernan may not be a household name in the US, yet…but she is an award winning, number one bestselling author known around the World for her Cormac Reilly series, which has sold over 400,000 copies in Australia and New Zealand, alone.

The Murder Rule is her first standalone thriller, inspired by the true story of a young law student who uncovered evidence at the Innocence Project, exonerating a man who had been in prison for 26 years.

This title will be AVAILABLE MAY 10, 2022 here in the US.

Thank You to the Scene of the Crime Early Read program and William Morrow/Harper Collins for providing a gifted ARC. It was my pleasure to offer a candid review!

Thank you Netgalley for an eARC of The Murder Rule by Dervla McTiernan prior to pub day! I really enjoyed this book. I absolutely love dark academia books - And I think you could slot this one into that category, but it's different than most (In a great way). This one alternates between present time chapters and chapters from history, which are actually diary entries. The dual timelines make it all the more interesting to piece together what happened in the past and how it's impacted the MC's current situation.

This one has a bit of everything - psychological - mystery - legal aspects - school setting - secrets and family history. Buckle up for a wild ride! I thought I had this one figured out but didn't, and the twists were fantastically placed.

Thank you to Netgalley, Dervla McTiernan, and Harper Collins for an E-arc in exchange for an honest review. I really enjoyed this book- I went into it blindly and was pleasantly surprised. It was fun to follow Hannah as she infiltrated The Innocence Project as they try to overturn a murder conviction. I enjoyed the multiple POVs and it really helped develop the story and the connections between the characters. The twist was unexpected for me and it worked so well within the plot. I am hoping we see Hannah helping with more cases with the Innocence project (I love a good series) in the future. This one will be on sale May 10th, 2022!

4.5 stars, rounded up to 5 for GR.