Comic legal fiction

A nineteen-year-old Cobb is caught with the dock-workers' burial fund and will not say one word in his own defence — and the silence everyone has read as guilt is in fact the only act of love his family has left, and the one thing standing between the boy and the truth.

The Burial Fund

Teen

Comic legal fiction47 min

The spectrometer said the wine was a forgery, the master of wine agreed, and a man's life was to be ended over a bottle — and not one of them had thought to ask the only question that matters about a fake, which is who it was made to please.

A Question of Vintage

Teen

Comic legal fiction39 min

They had her on three cameras, her phone, and a swipe card, which in the modern view is the same as having a confession — and which proves only that the machine saw exactly what she did, and understood nothing whatever about why.

The Camera Never Asks Why

Teen

Comic legal fiction34 min

The voice of Comic legal fiction

Augustus Fenwick KCFirst-person, orotund, and sardonic — long Ciceronian sentences undercut by a dry aside, a Dickensian relish for character, and a claret-warm contempt for the modern world. The courtroom is theatre, the wine bar a confessional, and every charge sheet hides a small human truth the prosecution missed.