Written by lawyer-turned-writer Lisa Ellery, Craig Sisterson calls Private Prosecution 'a superb debut written with personality and pace, from an arresting new voice in Australian crime'. Andrew Deacon is young, fit and single, a junior prosecutor at the WA DPP with a bright future and a sense of entitlement to match.
That future starts to look darker when he spends the night with an attractive stranger, Lily Constantine, and she is found murdered in her apartment the following day. Based on a conversation with Lil, Andrew believes he knows who killed her - a senior Western Australian criminal law barrister, Sam Godfrey SC, who is also Lil's brother-in-law. Andrew tells the police everything he knows, but his quest to bring Godfrey to justice provokes retaliation and soon Andrew is on the run, with no way forward but to prove Godfrey's guilt. This is a pacy, darkly comic whodunnit with a twist - Andrew knows who did it but the clock is ticking and he has to prove it before he gets himself taken out.
