The Caverel Claim: A Legal Thriller by Peter Rawlinson
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

" Your use of the title of Lady Caverel arises from the no doubt sincere but wrongful usurpation of the title by your late husband [...] [W]e must now invite you to acknowledge Miss Caverel, as she is presently styled, as the true and rightful heiress to her grandfather and thus to all the settled land and estate of the Caverel barony, and we must require you without too lengthy a delay to vacate the estate and the house [...]

To explain the title - the epigraph show the essence of the Caverel claim. Unfortunately, I have found Peter Rawlinson's novel a disappointment. While I very much liked his Indictment for Murder, which I reviewed a few months ago, Claim is altogether in a different category. I had to force myself to continue reading, to plow through the pages of uninteresting trivia, because I follow this silly principle of always trying to finish reading the book that I started.

I had problems since the very beginning of the novel, which I found intensely hard to focus on. The author uses several vignettes to introduce all main characters and establishes the background of the plot. Not only are the vignettes less than captivating but also there are no connections between the individual scenes. I had to write down the names of characters and their brief characterizations to keep track.

Anyway, let's have a brief setup of the plot: Sarah Wilson, a mixed-race exotic dancer in the US, is advised to see a lawyer as she might have inherited a magnificent mansion in the United Kingdom. It seems that she is not really Sarah Wilson but rather Lady Caverel and a rightful heiress of the Caverel barony and the estate. The novel can be rightly described as a legal thriller. The plot describes the machinations of two teams of lawyers, operatives, and public relations people: the "claim team" versus the "Caverel team." The plot culminates in a court case where the judge weighs the presented evidence.

As I mentioned in the review of Indictment the author of the novel has an extremely distinguished past Baron Rawlinson of Ewell, PC, QC, was an English barrister, Conservative politician and author. He served as Member of Parliament for Epsom for 23 years, from 1955 to 1978, and held the offices of Solicitor General and Attorney General for England and Wales and for Northern Ireland. While the author undoubtedly had rich experience as a court counsel I am not quite able to buy his description of the Caverel court case goings-on. The scenes are theatrical, punctuated by grandstanding, intrusions from spectators, etc. Naturally, I might be wrong, but unlike in the case of Indictment I am not buying the account of the legal proceedings.

The one aspect of the novel I like is the incursion of public relations campaigns into legal proceedings:

"'She focused this case [...] on race and class. Race because the claimant is black and the Caverels white; class because she comes from a humble background and is poor and the Caverels are aristocratic and rich.'"

Otherwise, I am unable to recommend the novel.

Two stars.


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