Good bad woman - Elizabeth Woodcraft

A sparky and totally engaging first crime novel, featuring a delightful new heroine, Frankie Richmond - barrister, Stoke Newington inhabitant and Tamla Motown fan.

Frankie Richmond's career as a barrister specializing in family law, is going nowhere - she always seems to get tied up in important but low key cases, usually as favours for her motley bunch of radical friends. But a routine appearance at a magistrate's court to defend an old acquaintance against a drunk and disorderly charge unexpectedly catapults her into a nightmare world in which she ends up being arrested - for murder.

No favourite of the police - who are happy to see her go down - in order to prove her innocence she must solve the case when all she really wants to do is advance her professional life, sort out her mercurial friendships and meet the woman of her dreams. She soon discovers that these goals are not mutually exclusive, and that to save herself she must uncover some unsavoury truths about those closest to her.