Customer Reviews

The Arraignment

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(9)
3 star:		(18)
2 star:		(14)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

If you are a Steve Martini - Paul Madriani fan, this latest book is worth your time but not up to his best work. If you are a new reader and are looking for legal mysteries that involve complicated cases and courtroom strategies, I would suggest that you read some of Martini's other books first. If you like action adventure with some legal twists, then you will enjoy this book and probably rate it four stars.

Nick Rush, friend and lawyer at a prestigious San Diego firm, approaches Paul Madriani to take on Gerald Metz, a client who supposedly poses a conflict of interest for Nick. After a conference with Metz, Paul declines and Metz and Nick are soon gunned down in front of the courthouse prior to Metz's grand jury testimony. Dana, Nick's trophy wife, requests that Paul investigate her insurance benefits, and interesting legal manueuvering ensues between Nick's employer, the insurance carrier, Dana, and Nick's former wife. This is vintage Paul Madriani (and Harry Hinds, his partner), clever and interesting. It also intoduces us to Adam Tolt, managing partner of Nick's firm whose apparent attempts to protect the firm's reputation and replace Nick lead to several interesting developments.

For various reasons including loyalty to his dead friend and inconsistencies regarding the events concerning Nick's death, Paul (with reluctant help from Harry) decides to supplement the police homicide investigation with his own efforts. Eventually additional violence ensues, and Paul and Adam follow the confusing trail of Metz and Nick and the other assorted unsavory individuals that Paul has unearthed to Mexico. While any of the individual incidences of violence and danger might be believable, the cumulative effect defies belief. Of course, almost nothing is what it appears, and misdirecton is rampant, both for the reader and the participants. Paul repeatedly and often unnecessarily puts himself in incredibly perilous situations, and often his escapes defy belief. This seems totally out of keeping with his character in previous books, especially given his concern for his role as sole parent for his daughter since the death of his wife. It almost seems as if Martini was writing this book with the goal of maximizing it's potential as a movie project and wanted to create additional complexity and action a la James Patterson.

While almost all the loose ends are tied together in the final chapter, and while the action and several clever plot twists kept me totally involved, my final reaction was one of disappointment. Steve Martini can undoubtedly write a good altough implausible action-adventure story, and the major elements of this story were well thought out. But I was in the end let down not just because it was not what I expected as a Paul Madriani fan, but because the result of the attempt to meld the two genres (legal mystery and action story) was less than the sum of the parts. It suffered from the conclusion being both unbelievable and complex, and my reaction upon finishing the book was disappointment even though in some ways justice and right prevailed.

I'll have to say I've enjoyed some of Martini's other work better than this one. But still, I read the book almost without stopping because I enjoy this author's style of writing. I think what disappointed me more than anything is the fact I had the plot figured out from the beginning and the story ended as I thought it would. Regardless, I would recommend the book to anyone for a good read and I'll be waiting for another Martini book in the future. I'll have to admit the beginning of Chapter 7 on page 82 really tickled me. Apparently, Martini/Madriani has his own views on journalism's "spin" nowadays.

In Steve Martini's "The Arraignment," criminal defense attorney Paul Madriani is horrified when a friend of his is gunned down before his eyes. For a variety of reasons, Madriani does not leave it up to the police to catch the killer. He starts an investigation of his own, hoping to uncover the truth behind his friend's death. Madriani has his friend's electronic organizer, which he conceals from the police, and he uses this vital piece of evidence to track down leads. Along with his partner, Harry Hinds, Madriani crosses the border into Mexico, where he risks his life to confront his friend's killer.

"The Arraignment" does not work as a legal thriller or as a mystery. All of the characters in this book are one-dimensional stick figures, such as Dana, the blonde and shallow trophy wife, Margaret, the bitter ex-wife who was replaced by Dana, and Adam Tolt, the power-hungry head of a large law firm. Madriani has very little reason to neglect his law practice and risk his life doing police work. Nor does he have any good reason to obstruct justice and withhold vital evidence from the authorities. Since he is a single parent with a child, one would expect Madriani to be more circumspect with his health and safety and more concerned with his professional ethics.

The plot of "The Arraignment" is extremely complicated and the ending makes very little sense. Martini tediously stretches the book out to four hundred pages for no apparent reason. "The Arraignment" is one of Martini's weakest books and I do not recommend it.

Some of his earlier books were much better. Compared to other authors, this is a good book. compared to his earlier work, this is just OK.

In his other books when he fully concentrates on law or on thriller (e.g. critical mass) he is able to put his full heart behind his writing. This book really meanders. It starts off as a legal stories wanders as a narrative in the middle and ends up as a half baked thriller story. There are two stories intertwined but neither is explained easily. Suddenly our dear lawyer has become an action hero. How he survives multiple spots where he would get killed beats me. When you try to do a number of things you often end of doing none of them well.

I had high expectations for this book. I have enjoyed others by this author. However, I had to force myself to keep plodding through a cast of unsympathetic characters, little emotional depth, and an ending I guessed early in the book. I kept reading thinking it must get better. There were a few intriging chapters, but only a few.The ending was not satisfying, there were many unresolved, disjointed story lines. I still give it three stars because Martini is a good author, this is just average work when compared with his other novels.

This story starts off a little slow. You get to know the characters and get a feel for the setting. It is all based around this lawyer named Nick who gets killed. And how his friend Paul Madrini tries to help find out who did this. He gets into a couple of difficult situations in between.

Paul has to go through a whole bunch of people to find out all the missing links of the murder. He has to deal with insurance companies and Nick's wives. Both his ex wife and his widowed wife. You have to sit tight and make it through the beginning chapters before the story really starts to pick up.

Once you start getting towards the end of this book the story starts to move at a very quick pase. When in the beginning you wanted to just put the book aside, but now yo0u can't put it down. There are some pretty crazy action scenes towards the and then it happens. You find out who killed Nick and all the other guys and boy does it surprise you.

Paul Madriani's old buddy Nick Rush, a criminal lawyer who cleans up client messes at a prestigious San Diego law firm, asks him to talk with Gerald Metz a questionable character involved in something in Mexico. Paul tells Nick he wants no part of Metz then Nick and Metz are gunned down on the steps of the San Diego courthouse. They were there to appear at Metz's arraignment, the book's only connection to its title.

A hottie named Dana was Nick's trophy wife, but his firm's $2 million key man policy still has first wife Maggie's name on it. A little legal maneuvering, supported by power broker Adam Tolt who has all kinds of devious motives for Paul to succeed, and Madriani negotiates a payoff where everyone comes out ahead. Now the quest to find out what Nick was really up to begins in earnest.

To this point the plot was unfolding at a great pace and the dialogue crisp. Tolt was pulling all kinds of strings and Madriani was scoring points despite the master manipulator. But then the setting moves south of the border, and the story goes south as well. Soon we have Madriani dodging magazines of automatic fire from an ultra light plane then tricking the pilot into an extraordinary mishap. Herman a 300lb black bodyguard is also on hand for some super human feats, and a trail of bodies strings from California to Cancun.

The author gives you enough to suspect who the real bad guys are and ties all his extraneous characters into the finale, but the web that holds them is a real stretch and doesn't flow from the plot. Good, but not your best Martini.

Arraignment was my first Steve Martini book, and I followed the convoluted plot with interest. Much of the plot was implausible but still interesting and worth the time. However, when the denouement occurred in the epilogue, I was stunned. Mr. Martini ends the last chapter of his book with loose ends everywhere. This forces him to give the reader information in the epilogue that he has omitted in the plot. I will give Mr. Martini's work one more chance, but I would not recommend Arraingment.

This book was highly recommended but I was totally disappointed. It started out okay but then got boring. There was no character in the book that I cared about or frankly, how the story ended. It went 100 pages way to long. It was dragged out, to wordy. Not sure I would read his books again. After reading just a few pages, I would fall asleep. Found this book to be a great cure for insomnia.
I have read better murder mysteries.