Hoyle, Powles, Gee and Andrews, Ough, and now Capper on Mareva injunctions. One feels like Macbeth: “what, will the line stretch out to the crack of doom?” It is indeed a curiosity of the Mareva injunction that it should inspire such a dazzling array of monograph writers, when the subject itself is so inherently fluid as to render each and every one of them out of date by the time it sees the light of day.

And yet, for all that certain areas of the book have rapidly become obsolete since publication (in particular that dealing with the jurisdiction of the court to grant injunctions over worldwide assets), this is nonetheless a well written and comprehensive account of the Mareva jurisdiction. All the major cases (and many minor ones) have been covered, and all the old chestnuts (e.g., the injunction’s inconsistency with Lister v. Stubbs (1890) 45 Ch.D. 1, comparisons with saisie conservatoire, and so on) are also dealt with. Although this is only a short work, and therefore not intended to be exhaustive, it nonetheless covers the ground in a helpful and generally satisfactory way. There are one or two curiosities, such as the fact that nowhere is it explained where the Mareva injunction derives its name; indeed the Mareva case itself [1975] 2 Lloyd’s Rep. 509 is cited only in footnotes, and not before Chapter 2. And, from the discussion of the origins of the injunction given in Chapter 1, the intelligent reader might well ask why it was called the Mareva injunction, and not the Nippon Yusen Kaisha injunction.

Another oddity is that the author clearly prefers the Queen’s Bench Division practice to that in the Chancery Division, since he ignores the Chancery Division practice of injunctions expiring on a return day. Possibly this may be a reflection of the position in Northern Ireland, where the author is at the Bar.

A more serious point, that may only occur to practising solicitors, is the general reliance