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Review by William D. Gagliani
Turow, Grisham, Baldacci, and now Meltzer. It must be difficult, living up to Next Big Thing billing, but newly anointed Brad Meltzer will manage nicely, thank you. His freshman novel, The Tenth Justice, written while he was still at Columbia University Law School, shows its jitters here and there, but pulls off enough tricks to keep readers hooked until the end.
On Ben Addison's first day as a Supreme Court clerk, he's tricked into leaking an important decision which leads to a fishy financial killing on Wall Street. With little choice, and not much remorse, Ben involves his co-clerk, the attractive and intelligent Lisa, and his three roommates -- Nathan, Eric, and Ober, all boyhood friends who hold entry-level DC jobs. Nathan works for the State Department, Eric for The Washington Herald, and Ober for a U.S. senator, and each is able to contribute something to Ben's campaign against his tormentor, who is now blackmailing him for further information. From that moment on there's little respite, as the plot turns into a deadly cat-and-mouse game in which no matter how hard Ben tries to be the cat, he inevitably ends up a mouse.
In a fine bit of irony, no one is too good to be spared the sacrificial altar of Ben's career. Indeed, Ben's callous use of his friends and its consequences mirror the novel's theme: that power, trust, and knowledge can be misused by both bad guys and good. When it becomes obvious that one of his supposedly loyal friends is betraying him, the thematic stakes are nicely raised. Wisely avoiding courtroom melodramatics, Meltzer uses his own knowledge of the Supreme Court's inner workings to instead focus on the clerks who toil in obscurity, drafting the nine justices' decisions and dissensions. The clerks are the "tenth justice," their biases and politics often shaping or slanting the Court's decisions. This is welcome fresh ground, and Meltzer covers it well.
Also enjoyable is the fact that -- for once -- the fate of the western world is not at stake, and the bad guys don't cackle with hand-rubbing glee whenever they win. They may talk too much and hesitate to kill when it counts, but consider these minor flaws a beginner's mark which Meltzer's next novel will surely not bear.
The Tenth Justice is a rare legal thriller -- Brad Meltzer holds your attention without a single standard courtroom scene, while exposing a rarely glimpsed side of judicial politics and the dangers of trust.
©1997, ProMotion, inc.
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