Personal Injuries is a legal procedural thriller, a type of novel that often turns on a point of law and is dominated by the business of the law as carried out by lawyers exploring and developing their cases and presenting them in court. The earliest English novel to depict the ins and outs of legal procedures is Charles Dickens's Bleak House (1852-53), while his The Mystery of Edwin Drood (1870) and Wilkie Collins's The Moonstone (1868) make lawyers essential to their narratives.

In fact, the family solicitor has been as staple of fiction from the novel's earliest days and is featured in the detective fiction of Dorothy L. Sayers, Ngaio Marsh, Sara Woods, and Michael Gilbert. Anthony Gilbert's Arthur Crook and Josephine Tey's Robert Blair are lawyers whose crusades seek justice beyond community and law.

Inquests, hearings, court scenes, witness tampering, jurors with insider knowledge, corrupt judges, and...