Scientist Who Wasn't There

'A page-turner with a mystery to solve, and a meditation on what it means for a child to know their parents' - Cathy RentzenbrinkWhat would you do to find out the truth about someone you love? A forensic, propulsive book about the line between fact and fiction.Renowned scientist Professor Michael Briggs was many things:A Space expert at NASAAn adviser to the World Health OrganisationA successful Big Pharma executive But Michael Briggs had a secret. A scandal broke out in 1986 when research he conducted was revealed to be compromised. Patients were also claiming that a pregnancy test he pioneered had caused devastating birth defects. Soon after his fall from grace, Briggs was dead, struck down by a mystery illness in a foreign countryBriggs left behind a long list of publications, patents, and inventions. But he also left behind hundreds of people who believe they are victims of his negligence and who are still fighting for justice to this day. And he left someone else: his daughter, Joanne. After decades of wondering who her father really was, Joanne decided to investigate for herself. In hypnotic prose, she uncovers the secret that shaped her father's entire life and made his story more fantastic than any science fiction. As she discovered, Briggs's greatest invention was himself.

Joanne has worked in the law for nearly four decades. She was called to the Bar in 1993 and practised mainly in family law and crime, representing clients as diverse as the Clifton suspension bridge and Buckingham Palace "Superhero" Fathers 4 Justice protesters, members of the Exclusive Brethren Christian separatist sect, and Angela Cannings, whose convictions for the murders of her infant children were quashed by the Court of Appeal. Joanne was appointed as a part-time judge in 2002, and has been a full-time judge in Health, Education and Social Care since 2009, specialising in mental health. Joanne is sixty, and lives near the sea in East Sussex.