An eight-year-old boy comes running out of the dark to find barrister Trish Maguire one wet Sunday night. Just before he can get to her, he's knocked over by a skidding car. Fighting to save his life, the casualty team find Trish's name and address sewn into his clothes. The police are convinced that he looks like her and must be her son. Only Trish knows he can't be. But is he connected with one of her clients, or could he be a blood relation? And who has sent him to Trish?
Recovering from a miscarriage, about to go to court with a career-changing commercial case, missing her partner, George, who is 5000 miles away, the last thing Trish wants is responsibility for a lost boy. But there is no one else.
Her search for his identity takes her to a brutal inner-city housing estate, where she has to confront not only the reality of life for people whose Giros cannot be made to last the week, but also many of her own fears. News of a particularly brutal murder reaches her only hours before she learns that her erratic father is the chief suspect. It will take all her resolution and integrity to pick her way through the maze.
The gulfs between rich and poor, between the heroically honest and those for whom life and the law are always negotiable, rip off the last of Trish's self-protective blinkers. There are choices to be made and lives to be saved.
The fourth in Natasha Cooper's Trish Maguire series, 'Out Of The Dark' is a touching and gripping novel that looks unflinchingly at some of the most destructive crimes.
