Welcome friend! Growing up, Jodi Picolt was one of my go-to authors and to this day, I still enjoy dramas centred around crime and the law. Today, I am excited to share my review of Proof. The author, Beverley McLachlin is the former Chief Justice of Canada, the first woman to hold that position. Her experience in the courtroom shines through. Here is what the book is about and what I thought about it.
Beverley McLachlin | Goodreads | Jilly Truitt #3
Jilly Truit has always prioritized her job as a criminal defence lawyer, but becoming a new mother has changed that. For the first time in her career, she’s stepping back from her firm and the day-to-day grind of cases to enjoy the quiet delights of parenthood.
Then the daughter of pop star Trist Jones goes missing, and his ex-wife, Kate, is charged with her kidnapping. Everyone from the police to the media believes Kate is guilty despite the fact that Tess is still missing— her reputation was ripped to shreds in the tabloids during their divorce and subsequent custody battle. Call it mother’s intuition, but Jilly has her doubts.
Kate’s whole life is about being a mother, and she claims she would never do anything to hurt her daughter. Cy Kenge, Crown prosecutor, asks Jilly to go back to work and take Kate’s case.
Jilly agrees, but Kate’s prospects don’t look good. Police have found a witness who says he saw Kate with Tess the afternoon she disap-peared. The best chance Jilly has of clearing Kate’s name is to find the missing girl. But as the weeks go by, the police begin to suspect Tess might be dead and are close to giving up the search. With the threat of a murder charge hanging over Kate’s head, Jilly must find the real kidnapper and save Tess-before it’s too late.
Proof – Review
Motherhood
At its heart, Proof is a gripping legal thriller, but what stood out to me most was its powerful exploration of motherhood in all its complexities—its joys, sacrifices, and deep emotional bonds.
Jilly is a new mom. She hadn’t planned to return to her defence attorney career right away but facing the challenges of early motherhood (from breastfeeding or formula to delegating a nanny to take care of her daughter) without her partner has been extra hard on her. Her mentor, recognizing her internal conflict, gently nudges her back into legal work by encouraging her to take Kate’s case. She finds herself empathetic towards Kate and occasionally imagines being in her shoes. What if it was Claire, her daughter, who had gone missing rather than Kate’s daughter, Tess? As she works on the case, she faces the guilt of dividing her attention between her child and her career.
Kate wanted her daughter to have a private life but with Trist, a pop star, as the father, and conflicting views on the matter, she has been vilified in the news many times. By the time Tess goes missing, Kate has separated from Trist and has much reduced visitation rights. She has been depressed and done a lot to pull herself together but the media only remembers the past. It was interesting to see how she was touted as the bad parent all the time. The media did not give a person room to improve and Jilly was concerned that a trial would be biased against Kate. There was no empathy from strangers online, just judgements.
The Crown vs Kate
There is a lot of circumstantial evidence that points to Kate having kidnapped Tess. She isn’t allowed to spend as much time as she would like with her daughter. Her image in the public is of an unstable and incompetent mom. Though efforts were made to find Tess, the police point the finger at Kate and Jilly feels in her gut that their accusations are misguided and efforts insufficient. She hires a private investigator to help build her defence and the case ends up becoming more investigative than previous ones.
Beverley McLachlin brings in her expertise by pointing out the challenges and flaws in the justice system. The use of line ups to identify a suspect, creating an unbiased jury in a time with news and media are everywhere and so influential, the sheer time and effort it takes to comb through CCTV footage, the kind of digging one has to do on all people connected to the missing child or who had come in contact with her, the extra efforts when police works seems insufficient… There is a lot of work that goes into building a defence.
Jilly knows she must remain objective, but Kate’s unwavering belief that Tess is alive drives her to go beyond her usual legal responsibilities, using every resource at her disposal to uncover the truth. I felt Jilly’s frustrations with the police and I am glad she pushed them at every point to continue to look for Tess.
Evidence and facts are about putting people in places. But people are complex and answers to what, where, when and how do not reveal who a person is and why they did something. There may be evidence against Kate but the more I met her through Jilly, the more sorry I felt for her. She is a woman whose past continues to haunt her and the police have held onto that as an indicator that she can murder her own child. One of my favorite scenes in this book is when the police inspector on the case joins the patrol watching Kate and is able to compare her behaviour to one who may have killed her child.
The Defence
I enjoyed how Proof was laid out. As the case builds, Jilly’s role as both a lawyer and a mother becomes even more complicated, forcing her to juggle her professional responsibilities with her personal struggles.
Jilly’s emotional investment in Tess, her growth as a mother and lawyer while bringing up Claire are portrayed well. I liked her interactions with Kate and how that affected what she thought of the charges against her. As a defence lawyer, it is not her business to know whether Kate did or not kill her child. Since Kate is pleading not guilty, Jilly has to show that Kate could not have killed her child. Her best defence is to locate Tess. Motherhood has changed her though and she can no longer just immerse herself into work for days on end. She has a little person to take care of. She has to ask for help in both professional and personal areas of her life. It is a humbling, vulnerable and loving experience.
As a new mom, this was one of the first true page-turners I picked up, and the motherhood themes resonated deeply with me. Proof is not just a sharp legal thriller—it’s a thought-provoking look at the sacrifices and struggles of motherhood, making it a must-read for fans of both courtroom dramas and emotional character-driven stories.
Proof is the third book featuring Jilly Truitt. I haven’t read the first two books and was able to enjoy this one as a standalone. I would be interested to see how the previous books build on the other characters. If you have read Full Disclosure or Denial or this book, let me know what you thought of them. Add Proof to your Goodreads shelf if you would like to read it.
Check out other thrillers on my book review index page.
Be First to Comment