To most Americans, the title sounds like a Supreme Court Justice, so we are surprised to discover that Justice Hall actually refers to a house in England. Formerly a monastery, Justice Hall has been the seat of the Dukes of Beauville for the past four hundred years.
Before I begin talking about this wonderful book, I should warn the reader not to skip the previous volume titled O JERUSALEM. Although this volume (Number 5 in the Russell & Holmes series) is out of sequence, beiing set in 1919 when Mary Russell was still Holmes apprentice, rather than in 1923 which is when Volume Number 4 THE MOOR is set, you will not appreciate JUSTICE HALL (Number 6 in the series, set in 1923) unless you read O JERUSALEM. This is because the main characters in O JERUSALEM ~ Mahmoud Hazr and his brother Ali ~ are transformed into Marsh (Lord Maurice Hughenfort, Duke of Beauville) and Alistair John Hughenfort, his cousin.
What is wonderful about this novel is a piece of injustice so grave and so devastating that the Hughenfort family is without an heir. It turns out that Marsh had a son named Gabriel, who was born in 1899. As neither Marsh, nor the boy’s mother (Iris Sutherland) felt able to take care of a baby, he was adopted by Marsh’s elder brother Henry, the sixth Duke of Beauville. And so Gabriel grew up, not realizing that his parents were actually his uncle and aunt, while the people he referred to as Uncle Marsh and Aunt Iris were actually his parents.
Of course there is a Latin motto for the Hughenfort family ~ Justicia fortitudo mea est, which translates as Justice is My Strength. Naturally, the Hughenforts are trained to have a bone-deep regard, perhaps even reverence, for justice.
And so, when 18-year-old Gabriel Hughenfort, a second lieutenant in the British Army on the Western Front druing World War I, is given an insane instruction that would have meant the almost-certain death of his men, he refuses.
Because of the chaos of war in 1918, because so many men were killed that regiments had to be constantly remade, with soldiers were being sent here there and everywhere to regiments full of people who did not know them, it is just possible that the story of what happens next has a kernel of truth to it. For instead of punishing Hughenfort with a court martial, or stripping him of his rank, his commanding officer decides to make an example of him by having him executed. His men (who love him) are forced to turn their pistols on him and shoot him in the chest, one morning at dawn. All of them hope that it is their pistol that has the blank in it.
Gabriel’s death is devastating for his family. The Duke’s wife Sarah, who acted as Gabriel’s mother dies shortly thereafter. A few years later, in 1923, the Duke himself dies. This puts Marsh/Mahmoud in a predicament. For he is next in line, and slated to become the seventh Duke of Beauville. But, as mentioned before, Marsh, under his nom-de-guerre Mahmoud, has been living in Palestine for the past twenty years with his cousin Ali, acting as a translator and scribe for the Palestinian and Bedouin communities who live in what is now Israel. They also act as spies for the British Government, providing valuable information about the goings-on in that part of the world. Their disguise is so convincing they even speak English with Arabic accents. Marsh/Mahmoud loves this life, but finds himself trapped in England as he is obliged to take up his responsibilities as Duke.
And so, one dark and stormy night, Ali knocks on Holmes door, soon after the conclusion of THE MOOR to ask for help. He wants Holmes and his now-wife Mary Russell to persuade Marsh to return to Palestine. But in order to do that, Holmes and Russell have to find a suitable heir to take Marsh’s place. Their search takes them to France (Paris and Lyon), London, and even Canada.
I don’t think you will be disappointed by this novel, with its plot twists and turns and its startling character transformations.
