Review: HOW TO KILL A CLIENT, Joanna Jenkins

• 
  this edition a paperback from my local library
  
• published 2025 ( first published 2023)
• Allen & Unwin
• ISBN 978-1-76147-137-7
• 384 pages
• 2023 Ned Kelly Award for Best Debut Crime Novel (nominee) : How to Kill a Client 

Synopsis (publisher)

'Everyone is going to say what a great guy and a great lawyer he was. He wasn't. He was a prick … And a shithouse lawyer.'

Gavin Jones is dead at thirty-nine. As an in-house lawyer who controlled millions of dollars in fees per year, he was legal firm Howard Greene's biggest client and wielded that power with manipulative contempt. But he saved his worst behaviour for women, at work and at home.

The partners of Howard Greene relied on his favour to fund their lavish lifestyles. If sycophantic admiration of the man was all it took to secure work from Gavin, that's what they delivered.

But no one liked Gavin. The list of those who suffered from his cruelty was long enough to include pretty much everyone who had contact with him. So who actually killed him?

A fast-paced and wickedly funny thriller about power and revenge set in the pristine towers of capitalism, How to Kill a Client is a scorching debut straight out of tomorrow's headlines.

My Take

I am reading these books all out of order, having read #3 in the series first. 

This novel is quite a heavy, almost academic read, the setting a world with which most of us are not familiar. Ruth Dawson is a founding member of a law firm Howard Greene, recently returned to work after the death of her husband when he is hit on the road while cycling. 

Ruth agrees to move to Brisbane to the branch of the law firm, where some big projects will bring in millions. One of their clients is Gavin Jones, a mysogynist, who is not above appropriating the work of others and presenting it as his own. When he belittles the work of one of the newish female partners of Howard Greene she fantasises about a way to kill him and then shortly afterwards he dies. When the police investigators identify his death as murder, it becomes obvious that there are many who had a motive.

I can see that, having read #3 in the series first, I am going to have some problems in keeping Ruth's timeline straight.

There is no doubt that the author is one to add to my "watch" list.  

My rating: 4.5

I've also read

4.7, BAD NEIGHBOURS  - #3