The Judge [Mass Market Paperback]

After the woman turns up dead, the judge hires two corrupt lawyers to defend him. What follows is an almost nihilistic tale of progress through the courts. Martini's faith in the judicial system must be next to nothing, as even the narrator, one of the lawyers defending the judge, almost blithely breaks the law and violates as many of the ethical precepts as he can find. While kudos is due Martini for keeping the courtroom scenes on the side of realism (thus avoiding the problems that plague so many films and other books in which the courtroom scenes are wildly improbable), the inability of the characters to obey major ethical and legal rules is very disconcerting.

"The Judge" reads easily enough, but without a moral center or anything approaching one, the book does little to engage. The legal give and take are reasonably interesting, but the characters are not especially so. Though the two defense attorneys are supposedly rather bright, they're constant misdeeds seem difficult at best to reconcile with their mental abilities. Yes, smart people do stupid things, but not this stupid this often. Finally, one of the problems that must be overcome is that of the defense attorney, who will represent even guilty clients because she or he believes in the process and the defense attorney's role in it. But the zealousness with which the attorneys break the law for their client cannot be justified by their abiding belief in their client's innocence. Rather, they seem to break the law because they don't care. And the protagonist(s) in a legal thriller don't care about the law, there are serious problems.

I found the book quite interesting and I got a good look at how trials are conducted. If you are looking for a good legal thriller, then you won't be disappointed in this book. I highly reccomend it.

This is the first Martini book I have tried to read. Okay, maybe this is just how the main character thinks, but there is at least one of these bad lines every three or four pages. It grated on my nerves. It made me dislike the main character. It made me hate the story. It made me dislike Martini as an author. It made me not want to read any more of his books.