Brightline

We draw the bright line, then hold it.When a student is pulled from the water on a rain-lashed night at Culmore Point, a grieving city looks for a villain—and the optics-savvy want one fast. Into that storm steps Nina Daley: once caged by a wrongful conviction, now a defence dynamo building a new kind of justice shop with human-rights solicitor Carmen Imani and razor-smart strategist Maya Trent. Together they call it Brightline—the rule so clear you can’t cross it without knowing.
Their first days are a baptism by fire. A dockworker who dived into the Foyle is recast as a killer. A young man on licence is one accusation away from being swallowed by the system. A barmaid, Aoife Callahan, names a predator the city would rather not see—the white-shirt charmer with the belt buckle and the laugh like a car alarm. In courtrooms steeped in precedent and corridors thick with tabloid whispers, Nina, Carmen, and Maya stitch truth from scraps: a runner’s tread caught on cheap CCTV, a ring fished from a gutter, a text pinged at 22:57 that won’t leave the dead in peace.
Set between Belfast and Derry/Londonderry—Strand Road interview rooms, quay-side vigils, York Street in a hard rain—Brightline is a propulsive legal thriller about women who refuse to be small, and a city learning the difference between justice and vengeance. It’s found-family and fierce ethics, a consent-forward stance on harm, and the stubborn hope that ordinary kindness can outlast the worst night of your life.
As bail hearings turn into battlegrounds and press conferences into traps, Brightline faces a question with teeth: what happens when the men who like the game stop playing by daylight? With a councillor’s grief turning to pressure, a newsroom courting “access” with the very man Aoife fears, and watchers idling outside kitchen windows with the lights down, Nina must choose how far she’ll go—how hard she’ll hold that bright line—before it costs her the future she’s only just begun to claim.
For readers of sharp, atmospheric crime with heart—Tana French, Steve Cavanagh, and Denise Mina—this series opener delivers courtroom electricity, street-level stakes, and a trio you’ll follow anywhere. Bonus materials include Northern Ireland setting notes, plain-language legal/procedural extras, Author’s Note, and a Reading Group Guide to spark big conversations long after the verdict.