Customer Reviews

Supreme Justice: A Novel of Suspense

5 star:		(15)
4 star:		(24)
3 star:		(14)
2 star:		(5)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

I read Margolin's previous Executive Privilege and really enjoyed it. This is a good, solid engaging legal thriller, but, for me, didn't live up to the prior one.

Short summary: Brad Miller is back from Executive Privilege where he helped crack the case that brought the former President down. Now, he's working for a Supreme Court Justice - and a case emerges that it appears someone is going to great lengths to prevent the Supreme Court from allowing it to be re-examined. Who is doing that and why?

Here's the ups and downs of it to me:

- Though able to be read as a stand alone, it'll be harder to enjoy that way, since references from the previous book kept getting made about the various characters. I found it distracting, and don't think they're terribly helpful to the new Margolin reader.

- It is well-plotted, so all the pieces get wrapped up nicely, and there's a few twists. But, I didn't find it as page-turning as some thrillers can be.

Bottom-line: It's as good as a lot of the average Turow or Grishams works, and if you like them, you'll probably like this one. But, I would really recommend Executive Privilege before and over this one.

At the heart of this highly plot-driven book is the petition before the Supreme Court for a writ of certiorari by a woman on death row in Oregon convicted of murdering her lover. Stemming from the heart is a series of side stories that go back and forth in time involving Supreme Court Justices, their law clerks, the FBI, DAs, a female private detective and a former head of the CIA. In its favor, Supreme Justice is a fast-paced, entertaining book that adequately satisfies your craving for a brief diversion from life's daily realities. Margolin does a pretty good job in tying the main plot and all of its side stories into a decent, though partially predictable, conclusion. It is an ideal read for a plane ride or a trip to the beach. However, in my opinion, due to Margolin's somewhat shallow characters that are, at best, serviceable, and to some of the mulitple story lines being a bit contrived, Supreme Justice is not a book that will provide readers with a full, rich sense of satisfaction that will stay with them for a while after they've finished it. For me, reading Supreme Justice was like drinking a light beer, in that it served to quench my thirst for the moment, but it did not leave me feeling sated like a more full-bodied beer does. Nor did it make me feel the need for another "Margolin" anytime soon.

"Supreme Justice" is a readable book, but is not an unforgettable book. It starts out with an exciting first chapter leading one to expect a taut political or espionage thriller. The book then skips around and introduces new characters including lawyers, Supreme Court Justices, DAs, private detectives, law clerks, etc. It skips around in time and space. The first chapter character later reappears. There is a female cop, Sarah, who is indicted for murdering her lover, the man in the first chapter, and is up for the death penalty. Her case is dismissed because the man turned up alive. Then he dies and she is indicted again. In addition a government agency with black suvs and contract killers has made the first chapter incident "disappear" and one of the Supremes and another powerful lawyer want to keep it disappeared. There is an attempt on the life of another of the Supremes. Eventually everything ties together and some disposition is seen of all of the characters except for one real bad guy assassin who is in the wind.

Read it on the airplane or while waiting to see your doctor, dentist, lawyer, etc..

Attorney and Justice clerk Brad Miller, FBI agent Keith Evans and private investigator Dana Cutler try to untangle an older case that would help death row inmate Sarah Woodruff, who was convicted for murdering her lover, John Finley. The case involves a ghost ship, supreme justices, the CIA and a few other entities.
Picking up where Executive Privilege left off, Phillip Margolin brings back a couple characters and adds a few more interesting ones. This author never disappoints me and always seems to get better with each novel. The intricate plotting and the rapid pace makes for a couple evenings of great reading.

Via the Amazon Vine review program, I was able to get an advanced reader copy of Phillip Margolin's latest novel, Supreme Justice: A Novel of Suspense. Overall, this is an enjoyable read, good for a few hours of suspense and escape. It didn't grab me quite as hard as many of his earlier works, and that might be due to the length of time since I read the last Margolin novel. He carries over a number of the characters, and I was hazy on the backstories. Even so, I enjoyed the read and the character issue wasn't that big of a deal.

There are a number of plots and subplots going on in Supreme Justice that all merge and get tied together at the end. There's a ghost ship docked in a small Oregon town that mysteriously disappears courtesy of the US government when local police try to investigate a mass killing on board. Apparently only a single person survived the killings, and now he's also been murdered. A Supreme Court Justice is lobbied hard to reject a plea to reopen the case where Sarah Woodruff was convicted of his murder, but her refusal to roll over leads to an attempt on her life. A surprise resignation on the bench leaves an opening that a former head of the CIA wants to have filled with a hand-picked (and likely in-his-pocket) choice. It seems as if everyone wants to keep Sarah Woodruff on death row for fear of what a new trial might bring to light...

My haziness on the main characters made the motivations somewhat hard to follow. As such, I had to just go with the story and let it unfold without trying to analyze why certain things might be happening. There were some decent twists at the end, and you had to re-examine a lot of what had come before based on what new information came to light. Supreme Justice was a nice way to spend a few hours without feeling like I had to keep reading to find out what happened next...

Disclosure:
Obtained From: Amazon Vine Review Program
Payment: Free

Entertaining, but not riveting, summer reading worth 3.5 stars. This book chronicles a monstrous conspiracy perpetrated by highly placed government officials that commences when a covert drug-smuggling operation goes south. An ensuing CIA/Homeland Security cover-up leads to a series of killings that spans many years, commencing with the murders of the crew of the smugglers' ship and ending with the stabbing of an imposter Supreme Court clerk, the fatal shooting of a Supreme Court justice in chambers, and the murder of a former CIA director. There are more killings in between.

The Supreme Court setting is probably described accurately, but the plot events are unbelievable, and could never happen in real life. Certainly this is not a realistic fictional portrayal of the inner workings of the Supreme Court, or of the daily life of a Supreme Court clerk. (Readers who are especially interested in what happens behind closed doors in the Supreme Court might enjoy the entertainingly-written nonfiction book, THE BRETHREN, by Bob Woodward and Scott Armstrong.)

The book does have a rather interesting and somewhat believable subplot, in which a policewoman accused of murder lands on death row because the state-secrets privilege is invoked at her trial to exclude exculpatory evidence. Also, one loves to hate the out-of-control prosecutor, Dietz, who aggressively pursues the policewoman's case for personal reasons, despite his lack of solid evidence.

The intricate plot jumps around in time, locale, and protagonists, which detracts from the story, although the plot details are all adequately tied up at the end. Brad Miller, the Supreme Court clerk who has an uncanny knack for locating serious governmental misconduct, is a mildly interesting character. The same is true of Dana Cutler, the investigative reporter who does the heavy lifting when it comes to exposing the misconduct.

In SUPREME JUSTICE, New York Times bestselling author Phillip Margolin returns to the corridors of power in Washington, D.C., with a thriller about a ghost ship and the President's nominee to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Former Seattle policewoman Sarah Woodruff sits on death row in Oregon, as she has been convicted of murdering her lover John Finley. Woodruff had already faced trial once for Finley's murder; she has therefore appealed her case to the United States Supreme Court just when a justice unexpectedly resigns, leaving a vacancy that the new President of the United States (POTUS) will be happy to fill. Then, for no apparent reason, another justice is mysteriously attacked.

Private investigator Dana Cutler is quietly called in to investigate. Cutler is a female hero of Margolin's previous bestseller Executive Privilege, in which, I gather Brad Miller, now a Supreme Court clerk, Keith Evans of the FBI, and Cutler, making up a fearless band of detectives, somehow find the POTUS to be a person with some seriously anti-social behaviors. The trio, along with Brad Miller's beauteous fiancée Ginny Striker, now looks for links between the Woodruff appeal and the ominous incidents in the justices' chambers. They are eventually led to a shoot-out that took place years ago on a small freighter docked upriver in Shelby, Oregon that was found to contain a dead crew and illegal drugs. And John Finley was the only survivor. Further investigation helps the foursome to uncover a plot by a rogue element in the American intelligence community that involves the president's nominee to the Supreme Court.

Margolin, a Seattle-based criminal defense attorney who has handled thirty murder cases, has written fourteen New York Times bestsellers, including his latest, Fugitive: A Novel and Executive Privilege. He has won the Distinguished Northwest Writer Award. SUPREME JUSTICE is a quick-moving, easy read, with a bit of a surprise in its tail, but it seemed to me to be a forgettable commercial grade thriller. The author does not succeed in giving us any real flavor of the places in which he sets this work, Washington D.C., Chicago or Seattle. His characters are so thin as to cast no shadow: we're supposed to believe that Dana Cutler is a tough chick, but nothing of the little bit we are told about her leads me to believe she's in the class of the girl with the dragon tattoo. The book might work as a beach read. Or might suit those conspiracy theorists that never get enough speculation about the misdeeds of high government officials, and can somehow believe that the POTUS has time to indulge in serious misbehaviors, but I got weary of this kind of plot years ago. Give it an extra star if you're still into this kind of thing.

I would actually give this a 3.5 stars if that were a choice. I think the plot has been well reviewed in other reviews. I enjoyed this book and found the characters and the plot interesting. There is something lacking that makes it not great, but it's certainly a good read. I would not agree with the comment that it's as good as any Turow because Turow's books have a great deal of depth not only in story but in character exploration. I think Margolin was successful in creating characters you care about and a plot that was somewhat unusual. I was even somewhat surprised at the end. I guess the only real flaw was its lack of believability, but that's true in many books. If you like legal thrillers, and I do, you'll enjoy this book.

I think I have read all of Phillip Margolin's books and I would call myself a fan of his. I look at his books as the literary equivalent of candy and he consistently does a solid job of writing fast-paced, legal thrillers. Supreme Justice is a follow-up to Executive Privilege and contains many of the same characters.

This book follows the Margolin playbook pretty well all the way through. I don't consider his books to be sticklers for realism but this book struck me as particuarly preposterous, with multiple attempts on the life of a Supreme Court Justice, a president being bribed to name a replacement Justice (and where did that scene come from anyways? just what evidence does the bad guy have on the current president that would make her do whatever he wants?) and impostor assassins placed in some of the most important positions of our country's legal system (could the police really be fooled by armed men calling themselves representatives from Homeland Security just because they say so?).

Despite my criticism, I have to admit I still enjoyed the book. To call it fast-paced would be an understatement. The book moves at breakneck speed and I could not wait to get to the end to see how it would all play out. With all that being said, how much is there really to complain about?

Phillip Margolin has always been one of those guys that has played along the edges of being a major writer. In the end, he has generally wound up being the book you pick up in the airport for half price. He has had some major high points such as "Gone, but not Forgotten." Sadly Supreme Justice falls solidly into his low point category.

Fresh off the takedown of a crooked President and his serial killing wife in "Executive Privledge," Brad Miller and his new fiancee Ginny Striker go to DC in order to follow new job opportunities.

Brad works clerks for a Supreme Court Justice as his reward for investigative work in the last book. Ginny starts working at a law firm that conviently holds the major bad guys and the answers to some of the tepid questions the book poses.

By painful coincedence, it is Brad's Justice that causes a riff in the court over a cert case of a woman on death row. She is nearly murdered by an assassin but is saved by, surprise, Brad Miller. So launches the story. Also appearing are Dana Cutler, the PI from the first book and Keith Evans from the FBI. I can buy the setup for Executive Privledge happening in that book, but to get wrapped up in another major conspiracy involving CIA directors and Justices just a few months later? That is stretching it. What is the next book, Miller and Striker take down the Speaker of the House and the Sec. State?

The book chops back and forth between 2012 (the book's present) and 2006 to the murder of a possible drug dealer/intelligence agent by a cop. Sadly, the book telegraphs the major plot points of flashbacks, so they become almost pointless.

It is a book hampered by bad writing. In one scene our FBI man mentions that the FBI can solve any case but can't figure out why there isn't anything good on TV. Really, that 30 year old joke is recycled. Maybe it simply padding as the book is a thin volume already, crashing in around 300 pages with Pattersonesqe chapter sizes and font size. The whole book has the feeling of a novel that was not born out of any good idea, but rather a manuscript deadline.

It is also predictable. As each character is introduced you can pretty much guess what they are going to be. You are the red herring, you are the real killer, you will end up dead. Etc. Etc.

Don't get me wrong, it is not an offensively bad book, but it is well below par. Hopefully Margolin can return to form in future books. But the trio of Miller, Striker and Cutler are certainly not strong enough to carry a third book.