A Trial of One: The Third in the Osgoode Trilogy
Mary E Martin
iUniverse

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As the sequence of events which are the final work of the Osgood trilogy, A Trial of One, opens; Norma Dinnick, Harry Jenkins’ elderly client has committed no actual offense. She HAD embroidered the accounts of homicidal retribution in a singsong voice as her doctors rubbed their jaws to cover up their grins. Their opinion was psychotic dementia with a little Alzheimer’s added to the mix. Norma was psychologically inept.

Harry was accordingly assigned as her legal guardian by the courts, whereupon he found her housings in a well-appointed mental hospital and set about trying to trace missing stock for the Elixicorp Enterprises which had been secreted by her late husband.

Initially marketed to elevate money for medical research into recollection loss too often found in the aged; the shares oddly enough had gone missing, and no one remembered just where they might be. Norma was quite adamant that she and she alone had any real claim regarding the stock which were said to be worth upwards of 30 million. Three men who also coveted the money were deceased, Norma had alleged that she had assassinated them. Dead also was her husband Arthur. George Pappas and his underworld connections, Archie Brinks and David Parrish, all dead. Even Harry’s law partner was dead.

Harry realized Norma’s madness was something she was well able to turn off and on pretty much at will.

A Dr Robert Hawke searching for the cause of Alzheimer’s wanted to find Norma, as did his associate Veronica Deal. And, her brother Garth. A lot of people were looking for Norma and all that money. The search was to take Harry to urope where Hawke’s extreme anxiety led to Harry being ruthlessly beaten. Only rescue by the quick thinking desk clerk at his hotel saved Harry from potential death. Later Harry returned the good deed when the clerk too was savagely assaulted for refusing to give away where Harry was.

Sale of Norma’s Georgian six-plex, a female named Natasha, an asphyxiated cat, and the suicide of Harry’s law school roommate, a crow in a workplace, Europe, London, Venice, peril and a anonymous woman known as Q, fabrication and treachery, torment, and blood lust and obsession, covert lines of investigation, demise of a mischief maker bent on dreadfulness, and a slayer unmasked.

Writer Martin, no relative to this reviewer, is a skilled writer who has on the pages of “A Trial of One” fashioned a medley of stimulating players overflowing with more persona and angst than most. Locales are well detailed serving to draw the reader into the sequence of events and grasp reader concentration fast.

Discourse is at times coarse, unrefined and astringent. The plot is a gripping, reader captivating set of circumstances. Villains are properly iniquitous, Harry is dense and clever by turns as he tries to disentangle the vagueness and treachery found in his client, the deaths of his late partner along with the scoundrels determined to latch onto all that money to be had from the shares of stock, moreover the conclusion of the trilogy is gratifying.

Not for everyone, “A Trial of One” does have some profanity and reference to sex will put off readers easily shocked. Others will enjoy the work, and if they have not yet read the first two of the trilogy will be determined to track them down for reading. Enjoyed the read, happy to recommend.