The Murder Rule audiobook

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. NOW AVAILABLE !! Thank You to DeAnn for the buddy read! Be sure to check out her amazing review! 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!

4-5 stars In 2019 Hannah Rokeby blags her way onto the Innocence Project clinic run by Professor Rob Parekh at the University of Virginia. Why? The answer lies in her mother’s diary from 1994 when she works as a cleaner in Maine. There she meets uber-rich Tom Spencer and his friend Michael Dandridge, the latter is the case Hannah is interested in. Michael is in prison following the rape and murder of Sarah Fitzhugh for which he protests his innocence. The story is told mostly by Hannah interspersed with extracts from her mother Laura’s diary. This is a cracking read with a slow but inexorable build up to where we hurtle to some breathtaking moments of danger, suspense and tension with numerous unexpected twists and turns in the plot road. Hannah is an intriguing central protagonist, she seems enigmatic, she’s certainly determined and can manipulate and use her creative powers to full effect in order to achieve what she wants. The diary is illuminating but is it true, that’s the million dollar question. We get hints of Laura, she’s in the background but she’s absolutely central to what occurs. The case is fascinating, the aspects of the law are really interesting and you find yourself willing the team in as they’re working against the clock to get Michael’s case heard. They are pitted against some powerful forces in order to reveal huge contradictions in the case. What emerges is a dramatic story of corruption, violence and intimidation to the degree that Hannah and the team don’t know which way is up. The ending is satisfying for all concerned. My only reservation is how Hannah manages to get onto the Dandridge case with such ease but hey ho, it does lead to a darned good story! Overall, another gripping read from the talented Dervla McTiernan who has a way of effortlessly pulling you into the storytelling and keeping you there until the very end. With thanks to NetGalley and especially to HarperCollins, Harper Fiction for the much appreciated arc in return for an honest review.

That was anther winner from Dervla McTiernan. Law student Hannah Rokeby blags her way into a student associate position with the Innocence Project. Then she deviously manipulates things so that she is on the team working on the appeal for convicted murderer Michael Dandridge. The claim is that he had his confession beaten out of him and certain evidence that may have resulted in reasonable doubt was not presented to the court.Hannah, however, is on a personal mission. For years she has looked after her fragile, alcoholic mother, Laura. As a teenager she found and secretly read her mother’s diary. In it, Laura describes one summer of her life. She was working as a cleaner at a hotel but some of the cleaners had side hustles and she was invited along to clean one of the big mansions that the wealthy use for summer holidays. Two young men were staying there - Tom and Michael. Michael didn’t seem to like her very much but Tom was friendly and they soon started seeing each other, Laura having ditched the cleaning.She says the young men seemed to argue a lot. When the time came for them to leave, Tom decided to stay on another week with Laura and apparently Michael was furious. The next day Tom’s body is found near the jetty. It is deemed to be an accident - he was drunk, fell and hit his head and then drowned. Laura, however, is convinced that Michael killed him in a rage.Years later Michael Dandridge is convicted of the murder of Sarah Fitzhugh. Angry on her mother’s behalf, Hannah sets out to scupper any chance of having him released.The Innocence Project team go over all the evidence and speak to many witnesses in order to find something to exonerate Dandridge (of course Hannah is looking for the opposite). But what they find, what they slowly piece together is a surprise to everybody! This one has a real kick in the tail! It was a wonderful plot with believable and likeable characters, mostly. By the end of the story though nothing was as it seemed and everybody was questioning their assumptions. There was a brilliant twist at the end and it’s likely not what you were expecting. I enjoyed this story from the talented Ms McTiernan immensely. I received a free e-arc in exchange for an unbiased review.

Absolutely loved it!The Murder Rule took over my entire afternoon, once I started reading it everything else was pushed aside. I really enjoyed Dervla’s Cormac Reilly series so I knew that I would be in for a great story. This stand alone thriller, this time set in the US, was easily as much of a page turner. We met a young law student, Hannah just before she leaves home in a mission. She has found her mothers diary and learned what happened to her when she was younger. The man who abused her has been in prison for 11 years but she has discovered that the Innocence Project at a university in Virginia is working on a case to have him released as he is claiming innocence. She is determined to infiltrate them and throw a spammer in the works. And she will stop at nothing to have her way,It is a fast paced and compelling read that I just couldn’t not stop reading. I loved Hannah and her strength and sense of family. It is a wild ride and I highly recommend.Thanks to Harper Collins Australia for my advanced copy of this book to read. Grab it May 4th.

4★“HANNAH – Sunday, August 25, 2019Because of the diary, Hannah knew exactly what had happened to Laura, and she knew exactly who was to blame.=======LAURA DIARY ENTRY #1 Saturday, July 9, 1994, 9:00 p.m.Writing in a diary is a habit you’re supposed to grow out of. Starting one now, at nineteen . . . I’m like the girl who brings her My Little Pony collection to her college dorm.”We’re not in Ireland anymore! McTiernan has written an American mystery about a young woman who found diaries written by her alcoholic mother, Laura. Only fourteen when she found them, Hannah read her mother’s story of how she became pregnant by one man and was abused by another.The abuser was jailed 11 years ago for murder, but the Innocence Project thinks his conviction should be overturned. This enthusiastic group of law student volunteers is determined to get him released.Hannah is a law student in Maine and reads about this. She's furious, so she writes to the head of the Innocence Project in Virginia, to wangle her way into their team. I use the word “wangle”, although her methods are a little more persuasive than that. Hannah is a doer – she gets things done. As far as she’s concerned, he’s paying for what he did to her mother and should continue to pay. Who cares how he was convicted?She arrives and sees how frantic the pace is and how many cases there are that students - students! - are sifting through to see which convictions they think were unjust. The boss explains.“Here at the Project, we are not the police and we are not the FBI. We have a very limited budget to pay investigators. I need students who are imaginative, inventive, and willing to be creative when it comes to pursuing our cases. Working here does not mean sitting behind a desk drafting motions—our staff attorneys take care of that. We need students to do the hard grind of investigating facts and tracking down new evidence. If you could be as dogged with that as you were with that as you were with trying to get a place here, maybe you could be of use to me.”They have several reasons for having selected this convict, so it is going to be quite a feat for Hannah to earn the trust of the group, while privately trying to foil their crusade to prove him innocent.It makes for compelling reading. Laura’s ten diary entries are interspersed through the first half of the book. They are often several pages long and written in italics, which makes it easy to differentiate from the main story. Laura’s voice is different from Hannah’s as well. In her diaries, she sounds young, impressionable, naïve, and in love. Today, she fluctuates between complaining bitterly and sobbing pitifully. She is so dependent on Hannah that Hannah feels tremendous guilt going to Virginia. Don’t be fooled when the story seems to slow down a little in the middle and you think you know where it is going. It isn’t. It becomes a thriller. They have a very short deadline to appeal the case, necessitating some interstate travel and questionable investigating.After the last few years of political and pandemic news, I'm not going to quibble about reality. I’m happy to suspend disbelief for the sake of a good yarn. I also have no idea how accurate the legal side of the story is, but I did want to know what came next.“The courtroom settled again into tense, anticipatory silence. Hannah was painfully aware that every person in the courtroom was focused on her and on what she might say next.”In spite of whatever artistic licence McTiernan found necessary for the telling, I enjoyed this story. I think she is probably going to appeal to a wider audience with this one, although I missed her usual Irish landscape, and I wish she would try an Aussie one.Thanks to NetGalley and HarperCollins for the preview copy from which I’ve quoted.

This is quite different to the previous books by Dervla McTiernan, the Cormac Reilly books set in Ireland. The Murder Rule is a legal thriller set in the US and it’s a tense and compelling read. Hannah is difficult to like from the start. A law student, she effectively blackmails her way into a position on the Innocence Project at the University of Virginia, a program that looks into last ditch efforts to free wrongly convicted prisoners. It’s clear she’s on a mission of some kind and it has something to do with her mother, Laura now an alcoholic. Interspersed through Hannah’s narrative are excerpts of Laura’s diary from the early 90s when she was a maid at a hotel in Maine and also cleaned rich people’s houses. Once the story gets going it’s difficult to put down. It’s a complex plot yet it works and I enjoyed the twists and turns.

The Murder Rule is a standalone suspense-thriller, from Irish-Australian author Dervla McTiernan, probably best known up to this point for her series featuring Garda Síochána detective Cormac Reilly.The story follows Maine law student Hannah Rokeby, as she manipulates her way onto the highly-selective University of Virginia Innocence Project. (Many such organisations exist around the world, and operate with the aim of providing legal and investigative services for selected individuals seeking to prove their innocence of crimes for which they have been wrongly convicted). However, unlike her Project colleagues, Hannah's motives aren't altruistic, idealistic or even based around bolstering her own employability post-law school. She's motivated purely by thoughts of revenge, and is fully prepared to undertake any skulduggery necessary to achieve her aim.The UVA Innocence Project's current big case is that of Michael Dandridge, a man who has spent 11 years in prison for the rape-murder of Yorktown mother of two Sarah Fitzhugh in 2007. New evidence of prosecutorial misconduct has recently come to light, and Dandridge's case has been sent for retrial. He protests his innocence, claiming that a false confession was beaten out of him by Sheriff Jerome Pierce, and that a witness identification - by the victim's then-8-year-old son - was wrong. Unfortunately, the friend who might have been able to provide Dandridge with an alibi seems to have vanished off the face of the earth.The story employs a dual timeline narrative, alternating between Hannah's exploits in the novel's 2019 present and a series of diary entries made by her mother, Laura, during the summer of 1994. By this means, we gradually learn the link between Hannah, Laura and Michael, and the reasons that justify her determination to prevent him from being released.However, as Hannah dives deeper into Michael's alleged crimes and gains a greater appreciation for what her Innocence Project colleagues are trying to achieve, she finds herself beginning to question what is reality and what is illusion. Her repeated investigative trips backwards and forth across Virginia, from Charlottesville to Yorktown, to the Greensville Correctional Centre, morph into a journey of discovery and ultimately an attempt at redemption for the self-righteous Hannah.I found The Murder Rule a taut and multi-layered mystery, an engrossing read with a thrilling conclusion. A courtroom scene which draws the threads together is perhaps more than a little far-fetched, but I was willing to suspend disbelief for the sake of the story. Hannah is a complex character, and is difficult to like in many respects, given her blatantly dishonest activity in attempting to undermine the Innocence Project's defence of Michael Dandridge. However, as more details of her upbringing emerge, the reader can at least understand her rationale, if not her methods. The supporting cast of characters are varied and intriguing, from Hannah's student colleagues to her supervising professor, her demanding alcoholic mother to an almost cartoonishly-evil town Sheriff.I'd recommend The Murder Rule to readers who enjoy contemporary crime fiction with strongly character-driven plot threads. However, fans of Dervla McTiernan's Irish-set Cormac Reilly series should be aware, before launching into The Murder Rule, that this is a very different beast indeed. While there are some common themes around police corruption and the re-consideration of old crimes, the setting and style of The Murder Rule struck me as distinctly American in flavour, and perhaps lacking the subtlety of McTiernan's earlier work.My thanks to the author, Dervla McTiernan, publisher HarperCollins UK, HarperFiction, and NetGalley (UK) for the opportunity to read and review this intriguing title.

*www.onewomansbbr.wordpress.com*www.facebook.com/onewomansbbr**4.5 stars**The Murder Rule by Dervla McTiernan. (2022).**Thank you to HarperCollins Australia for sending me a free copy of this novel in exchange for an honest review; published 4 May 2022**No one is innocent in this story…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…If you’ve read this author’s previous books (the popular Cormac Reilly series – I highly recommend), you’ll almost feel like someone else has written this novel – the writing style and tone is completely different. That could be positive, negative or irrelevant depending on your preferences. For me it was irrelevant as I really enjoyed this standalone thriller. It was modern, gripping and entertaining. Hannah has transferred universities and joined ‘the Innocence Project’, with a determined focus on the case of criminal Michael. It is slowly revealed why Hannah is doing this, with journal entries from her mother Laura explaining the history and motivation. However nothing is as it seems and Hannah quickly becomes immersed in a complex web of lies, secrets and betrayals.Overall: happily and highly recommend this thriller for anyone who enjoys an addictive mystery suspense story.

Review coming soon.

4.25/5Dervla McTiernan is an author that I have had on my to-read list ever since her debut came out, and after I read the short and sweet synopsis for The Murder Rule, I knew this was the book I would start with. Almost the entire book is spent mostly alternating between Hannah's viewpoint and a woman named Laura's diary entries, and through this method, we find out exactly what Hannah is up to, as well as why she is doing it. The novel takes a dive into mother-daughter relationships as well as the law thanks to Hannah being a law student and volunteering with The Innocence Project program at a college in Virginia. Hannah is on a mission to make sure one of their cases doesn't go through, and the man they are trying to help free doesn't get released.Little by little the story is unraveled, and I loved reading from both Hannah's perspective as well as Laura's diary. The end took a turn that I didn't see coming and McTiernan made me hate more than one person while making me like another that I wasn't expecting to. I don't necessarily think this is a super original story, but it was totally engrossing and a super quick read. The audiobook is fantastic as well and narrated by Kate Orsini, Sophie Amoss & Michael Crouch. It was so nice having a narrator for each viewpoint, and they all perfectly enhanced the characters and the book. The Murder Rule is perfect for the reader of crime fiction who can suspend a touch of disbelief. I also recommend it if you are a fan of unlikable characters! I am going to be hanging onto this book for sure and can definitely see a reread in my future.Thank you to the publishers for my advanced listening and reader copies of this book. All opinions and thoughts are my own.

3.5 stars rounded upFirst 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 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. Hannah Rokeby is a third year law student. She's using blackmail to get into the Innocence Project at the University of Virginia, which was set up to help free miscarriage of justice victims on death row or serving life sentences. Hannah's mother is a fragile alcoholic. After reading her mother's diary from 1994, and learning of Michael Dandridge, she wants to be part of the Innocence Project.The characters are an interesting bunch. There's plenty of twists to keep you invested in the plotline. I liked the authors style in writing this legal thriller. But I did feel there were some loose ends left hanging at the end.I would like to thank #NetGalley #HarperCollinsUK #HarperFiction and the author #DervlaMcTiernan for my ARC of #TheMurderRule in exchange for an honest review.