Commencement

Easter Ross. Ten past two on a February morning.

A night carer on her break at a care home above the Cromarty Firth smells smoke, and looks up at the detector above the door. Its little red light is off. So is every other one in the wing. Nobody else is awake. Eleven old people are asleep on either side of her.

She gets eight of them out on her own.

The alarms had been switched off for four months. The manager who did it tells the police everything. So does an email he sent at midnight to a regional director three hundred miles away, which says I'm not comfortable, and which nobody ever answered.

Procurator Fiscal Depute Niamh Tolmie puts the manager and the company in the same dock. The trial is fixed for November, among the last in Scotland under the old rules: three verdicts, and eight of fifteen to convict.

Then something goes wrong, and the trial has to start again. After New Year's Day. After the law has changed.

Same man. Same fire. Same evidence. A different law, decided by a calendar, and by somebody who chose the date.

The court will hear their verdict.

You will see their votes.

Commencement is the fourth novel in The Fifteen, a Scottish courtroom series that follows one prosecution team through eight cases on either side of the reform of the Scottish jury, and shows the reader the one room no real Scot is ever allowed to describe.

Perfect for readers of Scott Turow, John Grisham, Denise Mina and Anatomy of a Scandal.