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37 of 41 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Plausible/Implausible, January 7, 2000
Since starting law school, and continuing into being a clerk for a state supreme court, novels have become the occupation of the last ten minutes of my night, after I've become exhausted enough to stop what I was doing and drag my corpus to bed and before my eyelids slam down mid-sentence. The Tenth Justice, however, caused me to neglect friends and loved ones during my scarce 'free' time until it was finished, within two days. This book certainly scores as a page-turner. The Tenth Justice's other claim to worthiness is its premise. First, it exposes the tremendous degree of influence judicial clerks, most fresh from law school, have over the written, precedential product of the high courts. Second, the book examines how easily someone could lulled into a false sense of security by feeling 'behind the scenes' and out of the public eye. That the primary work of opinion writing is done by clerks, with experienced judges acting mainly as watchful editors and mentors, is true of some chambers. The naive sense of invisibility and harmlessness one sometimes feels as a clerk is also not far off. That the protagonist clerks write U.S. Supreme Court opinions that sail by their Justice with hardly a changed word and that a clerk might give away the outcome of a major case at a first meeting are both sheer hyperbole. They are not so far out of the question, however, as to be beyond suspending my disbelief. On the other hand, the quality of the writing probably says more about why Meltzer is writing page-turners, not being a clerk or a practicing lawyer himself. The clerks, alone in their office, frequently launch into tedious diatribes about the most basic elements of legal process; they constantly play the "designated idiot" where one character asks a stupid question solely so that the other can explain something to the reader. This is truly implausible coming from characters we presume to be the smartest that American legal academia can produce. The dialogue between friends is sophomoric, and the non-lawyer supporting cast collectively have an absurd, almost Bond-ian gadget portfolio. In addition, the book delivers no insight into the Supreme Court; not once does is the reader privy to a conversation with a Justice and the clerks apparently see their boss little more. I cannot imagine this book was the product of much research into the actual workings of the Court. Beyond the clever initial premise, I found the The Tenth Justice to be a mediocre but voraciously digested and entertaining read.
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17 of 18 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
Be warned. Really bad book., January 27, 2002
I admit it. I only finished this stupid novel because it was a gift from someone who knows I love police procedurals and legal thrillers. It seemed disrespectful to the giver and to the author for me to walk to the trash can and fling this book into the rotting leftovers of last night's enchiladas and rice when I was only on the 100th page. I also kept thinking, "This is a long book. It absolutely has got to get better!" Boy was I dumb. It didn't. This is a most definitely NOT a "legal thriller." You will find no plaintiffs or defendents, no prosecuting or defense attorneys, no testimony or cross examinations, witnesses, juries or even any courtroom scenes. And you will definitely find absolutely NO thrills. It's not about the law. It's about five 20-somethings behaving badly. Its premise suggests that Ben, the supposedly brilliant protaganist (a Supreme Court clerk. Legal ... get it?) believes that he can fix an extremely stupid ethical lapse with still more ethical lapses. And his friends all go along with it. If they can just manage all this unethical behavior properly, they'll get away with it which will, of course, make it all OK! The characters are drawn with almost no depth and then they get shallower. I defy anyone to care one whit about whiny, self-centered Ben by page 200. I just wanted to slap him silly, fire his sorry butt, throw the book in with the enchiladas and go watch a rerun of "Law And Order." The editing stopped completely on about the 200th page. The thing just goes on and on and on while these five childish, self-absorbed and morally challenged "adults" have endless repetitive conversations in which they are being oh-so-witty, or they are screaming at one another. You can always tell when they are upset too, because the author gives us LOTS OF CAPITALIZATION TO SHOW THEY ARE ANGRY OR UPSET. Email-speak, no doubt. There are moments when the writing rises above repetitive and uninspired, but not many. Just about the time I thought the story couldn't get any dumber, the author threw in some stupid "plot twist" which, I am sure, was intended to make this a page-turner. All the plot twists did, however, is show complete disrespect for the readers. Consider yourself warned: Really Bad Book
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10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
The Tenth Justice, December 29, 2001
My fascination with legal novels over the years led me to trying Brad Meltzer's "The Tenth Justice". This is the stuff of "Best Sellers"? After slogging
through several chapters of the prattle of
self-aggrandizing juveniles who are supposedly the
brilliant clerks of Supreme Court justices and other
brainy yuppie-types I said to myself "Surely this
gets better." Wrong. How many times can we read
"Don't you trust me?" ...or "That was stupid of me."? I can only hope that this effort was written as
Meltzer's spoof of the legal novel genre that has
gained such great popularity. If so, he has done so
with success.
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