A Crooked Path: Injustice (2011)

Justice can be murder....

I very much enjoyed the five-part mystery series Injustice (2011), which stars James Purefoy, currently starring in The Following (that's probably not  a series I'll ever be watching).

Created and written by Anthony Horowitz, who wrote scripts for Agatha Christie's Poirot and Midsomer Murders, not to mention the entire (ongoing) run of the fascinating Foyle's War, Injustice, it did not surprise me to find, is another excellent Horowitz conception.

James Purefoy, terrific as usual, stars in the series as William Travers, a barrister who has moved from London to Suffolk and retired from accepting murder cases because of a traumatic event in his recent past.

Just when things seem to have settled down for Travers, a notorious former client of his, an animal rights activist, is murdered in Suffolk, where the man was working as a farm laborer.  Yes, this person was intimately involved in Travers' aforementioned past traumatic event.

Meanwhile Travers is reluctantly persuaded by an old college friend, Martin Newall (Nathaniel Parker), to defend Newall in his London murder trial.  Newall, who works in the oil business, is charged with strangling the attractive, young secretary with whom he was having a steamy affair.  But he says his computer was stolen from the hotel room where his mistress was slain (according to Newall, he was away at this time, getting postcoital curly fries).  Did the murder have something to do with corporate malfeasance by Big Oil?

Then there's Travers' wife (Dervla Kirwan), late of the publishing business, who is doing volunteer work with juvenile offenders (and also worrying a lot about Will's nerves).  This part of the series does tie-in with the main plotline eventually!

Detective Inspector Mark Wenborn, investigating the murder of the animal rights activist/farm laborer, has the narrative counterpart to the charming and decent but troubled Travers. A nasty-tempered, dishonest and ruthless brute of a policeman who will do anything to close a case "successfully," Wenborn is memorably portrayed by Charlie Creed-Miles, who was also in Endeavor.  This character only gets more hateful as the series progresses, which is pretty amazing, considering how repulsively he starts!

Viewers will immediately expect Wenborn to end up on a collision course with Travers, and this is just what happens.

James Purefoy and Charlie Creed-Miles

It's hard to say more about this series without "spoiling." The densly plotted and compelling  Injustice easily could have made a fine crime novel of the more twisting sort.  With all the flashbacks we are shown we are given versions of recent history in the lives of the characters, to be sure, but just how accurate are these flashbacks?  You'll definitely want to hang on to episode five to see it all untangled!  A good job all round.