The Phantom Judge - V G Lance

When the courts fail, someone starts keeping score.

In London, recently acquitted men and women begin suffering precise, terrifying punishments. A child killer scarred in a car park. A wealthy drunk driver broken by his own prized Porsche. A disgraced suspect forced to speak the name of the girl the law could not protect.

At every scene, one mark remains: a chalk circle.

DI Rhea Mallory knows these are not random attacks. The victims all walked free after catastrophic failures in the justice system. The methods are too careful, too symbolic, too expertly planned. Whoever is behind them is not killing. He is recording.

Her investigation leads to Hale Morgan, a former acoustic forensics expert whose evidence once could have convicted a murderer - until the court excluded it on a technicality. Since then, Morgan has vanished from professional life and built a doctrine of his own: mark, not kill. The record must be kept.

As the public begins to call him the Phantom Judge, Mallory must hunt a man many people secretly believe is doing what the law was too weak to do. But when imitation spreads and innocent people begin to suffer, the line between justice, revenge and public spectacle collapses.

A tense, morally charged British crime thriller about evidence, consequence and the dangerous hunger for justice when the system leaves a wound behind.