In a career spanning four decades, Christie Blatchford has become the supreme doyenne of Canada’s court reporters. With Life Sentence she gathers her long experience as a civilian infiltrator of the justice system, offering an unrelenting critique of a cloistered branch of government far less often queried than the executive and the legislature. The power of Life Sentence lies not only in its questioning, at times incredulous tone, but in the countless specific examples of the failings of our criminal law apparatus.