9 Scorpions [Hardcover]

Paul Levine (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 1, 1998

Award-winning author Paul Levine captures the dark side of the legal world with gripping, mordantly witty prose that "gets leaner, meatier, better with every book" (Miami Herald). Now, he delivers a thrillingly authentic page-turner about the murderous secrets of those who make and break the law at the highest level: the United States Supreme Court.

Lisa Fremont is a rising young lawyer gifted with a brilliant mind, natural beauty -- and an alluring sensuality. A newly hired law clerk on the staff of Supreme Court Justice Samuel Truitt, Lisa has a bright future. She also has a past that her curriculum vitae doesn't reveal....Long before she was Lisa Fremont, Esquire, she was Angel, an underage stripper in San Francisco's Tiki Club. And long before Max Wanaker was president of Atlantica Airlines, he was the wealthy benefactor who took her off the streets. Her driving ambition put her at the top of her class at Stanford, but her tuition, a highpowered career head start, and a new life came courtesy of Max, who knew a good bet when he saw it. Max took his angel far with a devil of a deal -- now, he's calling in the debt.

Three years ago, on its approach to Miami International, Atlantica Flight 640 crashed, claiming hundreds of lives and sparking a multimillion-dollar legal battle that is about to come before the Supreme Court. The swing vote belongs to Sam Truitt, and Max is depending on Lisa's expertise in the art of persuasion to save Atlantica. Lisa knows there's only one way to get Justice Truitt's vote: put aside her passion for justice and get into Truitt's life, into his head -- and into his bed.

But Lisa's obligation to Max is about to be overruled by a raw desire for Sam Truitt....One of the nation's most powerful men, Justice Truitt is also just a man -- with a failing marriage and a sharp, sexy law clerk succeeding in winning him over. Not knowing whom to trust as he steps into the minefield of the Atlantica case, he puts his career and his life on the line to strip away layers of corruption and violence outside the system -- and within. For even among his fellow Justices -- as tangled and deadly as nine scorpions in a bottle -- Truitt may find the deadly sting of malevolence at the highest levels of Law.

In the Machiavellian maze of political intrigue and personal betrayal that is the Supreme Court, Lisa Fremont and Sam Truitt could make one hell of a legal team. But inside the hidden sanctums of the halls of justice, there's only one rule to live by: stay one step ahead of those who live by no law at all.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Chicanery on the Supreme Court is a hot topic these days. Brad Meltzer's Tenth Justice made bestseller headlines, and by now there are nearly enough other thrillers probing the secrets of the federal bench to give the subject a category all its own. In 9 Scorpions, former trial attorney Paul Levine weighs in with his version. The book features a beautiful ex-stripper with a Stanford law degree who's just won a coveted clerkship with the most junior justice--handsome and charismatic Sam Truitt. Lisa Fremont has come a long way from San Francisco's seedy Tiki Club, thanks to a wealthy patron who's also the CEO of Atlantica Airlines. But Max Wanaker and his airline are facing a multi-million dollar legal battle that will be won or lost in the high court, and Max is calling in his markers. It's up to Lisa to persuade Sam Truitt to cast the swing vote in Atlantica's favor. Max's life, and hers, hang in the balance, for Max has sold his soul as well as his airline to a corporation owned by the Japanese mafia, and the Yakuza's strongman, Shank, has already killed once to protect the their interests. If Lisa's considerable legal skills or even her sensual talents can't convince the justice to see things the mafia way, Shank'll kill again. But what neither the mafia nor Max know is that it's not just Lisa's passion for justice that stands in the way of their plans. When she learns what really brought Flight 640 down and killed her one true love as well as 288 other people, a not-so-simple case of blackmail turns into a deadly battle of will and wits. The action ranges from the marble halls of the Court to the swamps of the Everglades, where most of the bodies and all of the secrets of Atlantica 640 are buried. Or are they? When Truitt joins forces with Lisa to uncover the truth, they learn that even the federal bench isn't immune to the forces of corruption and violence, in a thrilling denouement that reads like a blockbuster movie. --Jane Adams

From Publishers Weekly

Levine, forsaking hero-attorney Jake Lassiter, who has anchored several of his legal thrillers (Flesh & Bones, 1997, etc.), seems hopelessly at sea in this watery melodrama about an attempt to rig a Supreme Court decision. It won't take readers long to see that Levine is far from shore. His heroine, Lisa Fremont, is a T.S. Eliot-quoting stripper-turned-hot shot young lawyer. His hero, Sam Truitt, a cross between "Harrison Ford and Jeff Bridges," is a charismatic Harvard prof-turned-Supreme Court justice. And his principal villain, an enforcer in the pay of Japanese gangsters, is nicknamed "Shank" for his weapon of choice. The setup is more original. Lisa, under moral pressure from airline tycoon Max Wanaker, who saved her from the streets, and under physical pressure from Shank, who's yanked off her earring to show that he means business, aims to get hired as Truitt's clerk. Her goal is to persuade Truitt to cast his deciding vote in favor of Wanaker's airline in a liability case that can not only ruin the tycoon but which, if Truitt votes against Wanaker, will cost both Wanaker and Lisa their lives at Shank's cruel hands. Readers will predict from far away a key murder, and they won't be any more surprised by the stagy climax, which finds Lisa calling upon the spirit of an old lover ("Tony! Help me. Help me now"). The novel skims along well despite workaday writing and offers Sam's burgling of the Chief Justice's office and a dinner hosted by a Yakuza boss as colorful highlights. The title quotes Oliver Wendell Holmes's statement on the makeup of the Supreme Court, but it's the reader who's ultimately stung by this humdrum tale.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 384 pages
• Publisher: Atria; First Edition edition (September 1, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0671019392
• ISBN-13: 978-0671019396
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.3 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (26 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,540,371 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

PAUL LEVINE worked as a newspaper reporter, a law professor and a trial lawyer before becoming a full-time novelist. Obviously, he cannot hold a job. Paul claims that writing fiction comes naturally: he told whoppers for many years in his legal briefs. His books have been translated into 23 languages, none of which he can read.

He has won the John D. MacDonald fiction award and has been nominated for an Edgar, a Macavity, the International Thriller Writers Award, and the James Thurber Humor Prize.

What's new? Now on Amazon Kindle at $2.99: The 20th Anniversary edition of "To Speak for the Dead," the first of the bestselling Jake Lassiter novels. All author proceeds of the novel are pledged to the Four Diamonds Fund, which supports cancer treatment and research at Penn State Hershey Children's Hospital.

Writing in USA TODAY, Larry King called the Lassiter series, "Mystery writing at its very, very best."

To Speak for the Dead
Night Vision
False Dawn
Mortal Sin
Riptide
Fool Me Twice
Flesh & Bones

A Miami Dolphins linebacker turned hard-nosed lawyer, Lassiter has been described by Booklist as "one of the most entertaining series characters in contemporary crime fiction" and by The Miami Herald as having "a lot more charisma than Perry Mason ever did."

Also now available on Kindle, "Impact," a legal thriller set at the Supreme Court; "Ballistic," in which a homegrown terrorist group takes over a missile silo in Wyoming; and "The Road to Hell," four original short stories.

Paul's other work includes the "Solomon and Lord" series, featuring mismatched Miami lawyers Steve Solomon and Victoria Lord:

Solomon vs. Lord
The Deep Blue Alibi
Kill All the Lawyers
Trial & Error

"Fans of Carl Hiaasen and Dave Barry will enjoy this humorous Florida crime romp," Publishers Weekly wrote of "Solomon vs. Lord."

Paul also wrote "Illegal," a thriller set in the world of human trafficking on the Mexican border. His next novel will be "Lassiter," due in hardcover from Bantam in September 2011.

Paul wrote 20 episodes of the TV series JAG, which gave him an opportunity to steer a nuclear submarine and land on the deck of an aircraft carrier, all without endangering national security. He is a graduate of Penn State University where he majored in journalism and the University of Miami Law School where he majored in the swimming pool. He passed the Florida Bar exam in his first try in what he suspects was a computer glitch.

He was a trial lawyer with the mammoth international law firm of Morgan, Lewis & Bockius, where he did not even pretend to know all his partners' names. He specialized in "complex litigation," cases so abstruse that even lawyers charging 500 bucks an hour didn't fully understand them. He tried hundreds of cases and handled appeals at every level, including the Supreme Court. Along the way, he filed expense accounts nearly as creative as his legal briefs.

Paul says he enjoys writing more than lawyering because he no longer keeps time sheets and gets to work in his underwear. He lives in the hills of Southern California, which he claims are populated by rattlesnakes and coyotes, and those are just the Hollywood agents.

More info at http:www.paul-levine.com

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars 9 Scorpions. Great read. Informative. Entertaining., June 3, 2001

By 

Larry Moskowitz (Burbank, CA United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: 9 Scorpions (Mass Market Paperback)

This is one of those rare books that enlightens while it entertains. The view of the inner sanctum of the U.S. Supreme Court reveals details not known by most Americans. The story is suspenseful and exciting; the characters are extremely well-drawn.

6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Oh, Please!, January 25, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: 9 Scorpions (Hardcover)

I found 9 Scorpions too contrived. I read in an interview that Paul Levine wanted to write for a woman from a woman's point of view. Of course that woman is model-beautiful, a former stripper and a brilliant lawyer-to-be, living in a luxury apartment with a closet-full of expensive clothes, all paid for by a sugar daddy. And of course the man she's working for/falling in love with is charming, handsome and powerful (and in a bad marriage, natch). Yeah, real life going on here. It was ludicrous and stupid. Paul, stick to Jake.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Supreme (Court) Thriller, September 12, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: 9 Scorpions (Hardcover)

9 Scorpions is a different Paul Levine novel. There's no sign of Jake Lassiter, but no shortage of unique characters. The dialogue is especially clever. Through the plot, the inner workings of airlines, trial courts, and the United States Supreme Court are shown. There's enough detail to move the plot, but not so much that you get bogged down on it. The action takes off quickly and then accelerates. You feel like you're one of the characters in one of the many times the protagonists (one a stripper turned Supreme Court clerk and the other an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court) are in personal jeapardy, which is often. The bad guys are very bad, with the primary bad guy one of the last people you'd ever want to meet. 9 Scorpions is a fast read and a great ride. I think it's the breakout novel for Paul Levine.