London, 1930. A headless corpse; an apparent suicide in a locked room; a man burned alive during an illusionist’s show in front of thousands of people. Scotland Yard is baffled by the sequence of ghastly murders unfolding across the city, and at the centre of it all is mysterious heiress Rachel Savernake. Daughter of a grand judge, Rachel is as glamorous as she is elusive. 
Jacob Flint, a tenacious young journalist eager to cover the gruesome crimes, is drawn into Rachel’s glittering world of wealth and power. But as the body count continues to rise, Jacob is convinced Rachel is harbouring a dark secret, and he soon becomes part of a dangerous game that could leave him dancing at the end of the hangman’s rope if he pursues the truth.

This was a compelling read, full of surprises and populated with interesting people.

Set in London in 1930, (the same year that Christie published ‘The Murder At The Vicarage‘ and Sayers published ‘Strong Poison‘) it combines period accuracy with a storytelling style that is more robust than that of the novels of the time. We have multiple murders, some gruesome and some simply efficient, torture, sexual exploitation, routine punishment beatings, corrupt police officers and a secret society of evil men, all described with an openness that would have shocked readers in the 1930s.

At the centre of all this violence and venality is the enigmatic figure of Rachel Savernake. She is far and away the best thing about the book. Trying to understand her propelled me through the book in an unbalanced stagger of constant surprise.

We see Rachel directly in 1930 and through the pages of a journal written in her childhood home decades earlier. The two views were discordant. This dissonance raised questions about who Rachel was and what she wanted. Was Rachel a psychopath? A hero? Both? Neither? Did she want power, revenge or both? Was she a good person doing bad things or a bad person being herself? I loved that I kept changing my mind about the answers to those questions.

The second clever creation in ‘Gallows Court‘ was the character of Jacob Flint, a young reporter working for a scandal rag through whose eyes we see a lot of the action and whose observations and doubts shaped my view of Rachel Savernake. I loved that Jacob wasn’t a clichéd hardnosed, ethics-free scandal seeker. He was, apart from his insatiable curiosity, an ordinary sort of man, still capable of empathy and kindness and still vulnerable enough to be shaken by violence and death when he encountered it. Jacob kept the story human and real and provided a filter for assessing Rachel Savernake.

The plot is so complex that it’s more like unfolding a piece of origami than following twists in a road. There are secrets within secrets and almost nobody is who they first appear to be.

There is a lot of violence, some of it theatrically spectacular and some of it, the worst of it, vicious but banal. What kept me reading was that, like Jacob, I had a strong need to know why all this was happening and who was doing it.

Through most of the book, I was thoroughly enjoying myself. Then, towards the end of the book, there was one final reveal that was too much for me. I was reminded of the original Mission Impossible TV series which regularly had a moment when someone would rip off a full-head mask and transform into a member of the team. I never found that convincing. It didn’t work for me here either. With that last transformation, the thread with which I’d been suspending my disbelief snapped and fell into a crevasse of ‘You have to be kidding me‘.

Even so, the book was entertaining and Rachel Savernake was compelling so I’ll be back for more in this series.