SOURCE: A review of Watson's Apology, in Los Angeles Times Book Review, January 12, 1986, p. 3.

In the following review, Forscey offers favorable assessment of Watson's Apology.

Beryl Bainbridge's 11th novel is a grim pleasure, but then so is life, and it is from life (and its documentation) that Watson's Apology is lifted.

On a Sunday afternoon in October, 1871, an elderly and respected clergyman scholar, the Rev. J. S. Watson, brutally murdered his wife Anne by cracking open her skull with a horse pistol. What British writer wouldn't find tempting material in the trial proceedings, newspaper accounts and an untidy packet of old love letters? Bainbridge, one imagines, pounced.

And succeeded brilliantly in bringing murderer and victims alive, in spite of some maddening tricks of organization.

John Selby Watson, after courting the impoverished, 30-ish Anne Armstrong at a remove and wedding her at almost first sight, immediately wants only to...