About
Lucy Rutherford
Crime, character,
and the messy space between right and wrong.
Lucy writes crime fiction with a psychological edge and a dark comic streak, stories set in tight-knit communities where good manners and buried secrets sit side by side.
Behind the fiction
Crime from the inside and outside
Lucy Rutherford is an academic criminologist whose career has given her an unusual view of crime from both inside and outside the criminal justice system.
She has worked for the Home Office Research and Planning Unit on crime and for an inner-city police committee, served for more than twenty years as a magistrate, and was a member of Sussex Police Authority before Police and Crime Commissioners replaced police authorities.
It has also given her a great deal of authentic material.
The writing
Brighton, secrets and human nature
Her debut, A Bunch of Lies, reached number one in Amazon's crime fiction chart. Her second novel, Out of Court Settlement, turns its attention to the justice system itself, and what happens when the people inside it stop trusting it.
Out of Court Settlement
When justice stops feeling just
A middle-aged magistrate turns vigilante. A sharp, questioning look at soft justice, victims, and what happens when the person meant to uphold the law decides she'd rather deliver it herself.
Discover Out of Court Settlement