Gagged & Bound

by Natasha Cooper

Published 4 July 2005
'Sticks and stones can break my bones, but words can never hurt me...' Who says? In "Gagged And Bound" Natasha Cooper explores the full destructive power of the wrong words spoken at the wrong time. Distinguished biographer Beatrice Bowman is being sued for libel by a newly ennobled member of the House of Lords. At the other end of the legal spectrum, a family of South London villains uses more violent methods to ensure the silencing of their enemies. Caught in the middle of both cases, Trish Maguire herself faces near-fatal damage...

A Place of Safety

by Natasha Cooper

Published 7 July 2003
The exciting new novel in the Trish Magiure series - can Trish find out what goes on in the murky depths of the art world and save her family at the same time? Trish Maguire is blessed with a slug of unexpected free time when a big case settles before it gets to court. She plans to spend it with her family. Sir Henry Buxford, an influential acquaintance, has other ideas. He asks her to investigate one of his private charities, a magnificent art collection built up before 1914 and lost for most of the twentieth century. The work is right outside Trish's usual field, and she needs all the time she can get to help her 9-year-old half-brother adjust to life after his mother's murder. Only Buxford's passionate desire to protect the vulnerable people involved in the Gregory Bequest Collection persuades her to take on the job. Giving herself a crash course in the murkier end of the art market and learning more than she can bear about the suffering in the trenches during the First World War, Trish soon finds herself sharing all his concern. As the small job grows to monster proportions, invading her professional and private lives, it brings about a death she knows she will never forget.

Creeping Ivy

by Natasha Cooper

Published 6 July 1998
When four-year-old Charlotte goes missing from a playground near her home, her mother, Antonia, turns to her cousin Trish Maguire, a barrister with plenty of heartbreaking professional experience of what can happen to children at the hands of abusive adults. But as the police pull out all the stops to find the child, no one is exempt from suspicion. Charlotte's mother faces tabloid vilification for leaving the child in the hands of an unsupervised nanny; her estranged father faces the full rigour of a police investigation; and even Trish finds herself at the top of the list of suspects. Trish is prepared to do anything, to use any of her friends - including Willow King and Emma Gnatche - to find out what has happened to Charlotte, but time is running out and even Antonia is beginning to question Trish's innocence.

Fault Lines

by Natasha Cooper

Published 5 July 1999

The brilliant and idealistic Trish Maguire returns in a devastating case of corruption and conspiracy. In a particularly difficult case of alleged child abuse, Trish knows that the jury’s decision hinges on the persuasive testimony of her friend and star witness, Kara Huggate. When Kara doesn’t appear at the trial, she realizes that something must have gone terribly wrong.

She returns to her chambers after court to find the police waiting for her with some horrifying news: Kara has been brutally raped and murdered. At first it seems as though her attacker was the Kinsford Rapist – a serial rapist and killer who has managed to elude the police. Then several inexplicable clues indicate that the murderer may have been a copycat.

Trish receives a letter from Kara, posted the night of her death, asking her to help a suspicious man named Blair Collons. Although Trish decides to help him out of loyalty and affection for her friend, she cannot understand why Kara cared so much for the paranoid and strangely obsessive Blair. Soon Trish finds herself mired in his unhappy story, with potentially devastating consequences.

Fault Lines is a tense and disturbing examination of the power of corruption and the lengths to which people will go to protect themselves.


A Greater Evil

by Natasha Cooper

Published 5 February 2007

Can you ever trust anyone, however much you care about them? Things aren't always what they seem . . .

In the eighth Trish Maguire novel, Abandoned as a baby and brutalised in care,sculptor Sam Foundling is the obvious suspect when his wife Cecelia is found beaten to death in his studio. Trish, who Maguire acted as his barristerfor him years ago, when he was an abandoned child being brutalised in care. She saved him then, but trying to protecting him b hopes he didn't do it. Her campaign for him ,now will brings her up against DCI Caro Lyalt, the senior investigating officer . . . and her own best friend.

Evidence against Sam mounts up. Cecilia's powerful mother is pressing for his arrest. The police hierarchy want him charged for the brutal murder. If Trish is to save his sanity, and her own, she must unlock the secret offind out exactly what happened in the studio that morning, and time is running out . . .


Out of the Dark

by Natasha Cooper

Published 2 January 2002
The fourth in Natasha Cooper's Trish Maguire series, OUT OF THE DARK is a touching and gripping novel in the bestselling tradition of Frances Fyfield. 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. 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.

Prey to All

by Natasha Cooper

Published 17 July 2000

How can you prove a convicted killer is innocent when everyone hates her?

In the third novel featuring London barrister Trish Maguire, Deb is serving a life sentence for the murder of her father. At first Trish is sure Deb didn't do it, but the more she learns about the family's secrets and the jealousies that boiled beneath the surface of their lives, the more troubled she becomes. Then another of Deb's supporters is murdered.

With pressure mounting, and with her own father at death's door in hospital, Trish finds her personal and professional lives crashing together with explosive force.


Keep Me Alive

by Natasha Cooper

Published 5 July 2004
Why did investigative journalist Jamie Maxden die? The coroner says it was suicide. The case is closed. Only one man fights to re-open it. Will Applewood is sure Jamie was about to expose a scandal that would shame the British food industry. But Will is notorious for his conspiracy theories. No one listens to him. In despair he turns to his barrister, Trish Maguire. Felled by food poisoning in the middle of Will's case against a huge supermarket chain, Trish is ready to believe any story about dangers lurking inside the pretty packaging of food we all eat. Even though she has more than enough to do already with the trial, an attempt to save a child at terrible risk, and plenty of emotional complications of her own, she agrees to help. Will's campaign takes her deep into the countryside, revealing a world that seems quite different from the metropolitan life she knows. But human nature doesn't change - whatever the environment. Cruelty and intimidation can flourish in the ravishing landscape just as they do in the grimmest of inner-city housing estates.
Moving between the two, trying to save lives and sanity, inexhaustable Trish is driven into a crusade - both personal and professional - that combines excitement, drama and agonising human tragedy.

A Poisoned Mind

by Natasha Cooper

Published 1 February 2008
A man is killed when a chemical explosion takes place on his farm. His impoverished widow, Angie, is fighting for compensation from the waste management company who chose to store their dangerous chemicals on her land. This brings her up against barrister Trish Maguire, equally determined to protect her clients - the company. But as Trish delves deeper into the case, she grows more and more troubled by a nagging thought: was the explosion that killed Angie's husband really an accident, or the result of sabotage? And, if so, who could possibly have had the motive to commit a crime so horrendous, and with such far-reaching repercussions?

With all this going on at work, the last thing Trish needs is the possibility of explosions at home. Yet such she faces, in the person of Jay: a clever but damaged fourteen-year-old boy, who has attached himself to her family. Trish is drawn to Jay and feels compelled to help him but, when his mother is discovered beaten and close to death on the housing estate where they live, Trish begins to wonder if they'll all get out alive.