In the past I have been accused by the humourless Feminista of being a sexist – mainly for writing a column: Women Can’t Park -which I will re-publish in due course just to rub salt into their extremely silly wounds.

The above, a political thriller, will be published September 30th.

Briefly:

Following the assassination of the Home Secretary and a number of terrorist outrages, Great Britain lapses into chaos and martial law.

Extreme political parties see an opportunity to fill the vacuum and exploit the breakdown of law and order.

Following attempts on her own life, can the formidable Supreme Court Justice, Lady Charlotte Treharne and her veteran ex-SAS husband Joel Samson, stop Britain tearing itself apart?

Liz Lutgendorff of the New Statesman had just written a piece about sexism in the sci-fi novel. Now admittedly, A JUDGE AND NOTHING BUT does not fit into this particular genre, but I believe her anti-sexist ‘tests’ have valid application whether the  work of fiction is sci-fi or a political thriller.

Her three tests of whether a novel is scurrilously sexist or not are:

1 Does the book have at least two female characters?

2 Is one of them a main character?

3 Do they have an interesting profession/skill like male characters?

Well now, many of the characters in a AJNB are tough females eg a Supreme Court Justice, a Home Secretary and a young ex-Israel Defense Force soldier. There are more than three in fact.

The main character is a female and a Supreme Court Justice at that, one of only two women ever to have been appointed to the UK’s Supreme Court – in reality, Brenda Hale is the only female Justice at present who sits.

All of them are highly intelligent, educated and strong, but God help them they love men!

So, Ruck IS NOT GUILTY as charged. Indeed all my novels have capable and main female characters in them eg Lise Treharne of the RAGGED CLIFFS TRILOGY to name but one.

Julian Ruck – Editor