How To Kill A Client by Joanna Jenkins

Publisher's Synopsis

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?

My Review of How To Kill A Client by Joanna Jenkins

Corporate law is not exactly known as the glamorous side of the legal world, but it’s definitely responsible for some of the most lucrative paydays when high stakes clients are concerned. And where there’s money you’ll always find corruption of one sort or another lurking close by. It’s here, through the lure of power and money that the essence of a dramatic murder mystery lies within the walls of legal firm Howard Greene.

Gavin Jones is the in-house lawyer for Minerallic and he controls where the company will send its legal business. It’s a huge company and its business is worth many millions of dollars to the corporate lawyers he chooses. This means there’s plenty of opportunity for someone who is completely narcissistic, power hungry and desperate to line his own pockets to run amok. Not only that, he’s a complete misogynist to boot.

During the tender process his true personality shines through in spectacular fashion, largely to the detriment of Howard Greene’s competition lawyer Viv Harrison. His dislike and disdain for her not only threatens the company’s chances of landing the big contract but also puts her position as a partner at the company at risk.

Things progress to the point where Viv begins to imagine what it might be like to be rid of the troublesome man. She even goes as far as plotting and then beginning the process of carrying out a method of murdering him. That is, until common sense kicks in and she realises she can’t possibly carry out such a diabolical plan.

But, as we already know from the opening chapter, Gavin Jones is dead. He suddenly died from a heart attack, unusual in a man who, up until he died, was in perfect health.

This turns into a very well pieced together murder mystery thanks to a series of strategic pieces of information distributed to a succession of characters. The upshot of that is that Jenkins has made it possible that the murderer could be one of at least five different characters. The challenge lay in trying to figure out who it actually was.

The villain of the piece, the dead guy (Gavin) was such an abhorrent piece of work, he could have rubbed anyone up the wrong way to the point where they wanted to off him, so that opened up the potential suspects even wider. (Heck, I disliked him enough that I would have happily done it myself!) That’s actually my way of congratulating the author for bringing her characters so fully to life that it prompted a visceral reaction from me.

The world of corruption and greed in big business is a well-trodden path, as the male dominated chauvinism that runs rampant in such environments. But the world is changing and How To Kill A Client might just sound a warning that would pay to be heeded. 

I found this to be a very entertaining murder mystery that did a great job in obscuring the identity of the killer until the appropriate moment. The business environment was described in a scarily accurate way, to the point where I felt I was wrenched out of retirement and thrust back into that dreaded atmosphere myself. *shudder*