REVIEW
Dexter Dias - "Error of Judgement"
Hodder & Stoughton (0 340 63257 7) £16.99
Nick Downes, barrister and hero of Dexter Dias’ second novel, is everything he should be. A bungling old school style hero, partly naïve, partly just plain stupid. He uses the tried and tested formula of making the wrong decisions at the wrong time which strangely all seem to bring him nearer the truth. The opening of Error of Judgement finds him with familiar problems domestic and professional. His relationship with fellow barrister Sally Fielding is breaking down and he has landed himself with a client who has confessed to a murder but can’t remember who he has murdered or why. Indeed the man even has doubts about his own identity. When the clients’ wife turns up Nick’s life takes a further downward spiral, from the wilder shores of Freudian psychoanalysis to the everyday, sordid Soho vice scene. Downes is dragged inexorably to the horrific conclusion of the case. Dias handles the plot well and only shows signs of lapsing into the risible on a couple of occasions when his taste for black humour lets him down a touch. Otherwise entertaining. Imagine Cary Grant in Silence of the Lambs. (RL)