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Mistress of Justice by Jeffery Deaver
Reader Reviews 8 of 10 people found the following review helpful: Mistress of Justice - an earlier effort, January 5, 2003 Reviewer: A reader from Los Angeles, CA United States This book seems to have been written by Jeffrey Deaver just prior to his full acquisition of the unique style, creativity, pace and humor that marked his later works. The Lincoln Rhyme novels, for example. All of them employ Jeffrey's formidable writing skills, and are tremendously entertaining on many levels. Mistress of Justice falls short of these expectations, however. I got only halfway through it, skimmed the rest, then went right to the ending - which was predictable. Never thought I'd do that with one of Jeffrey's books, and I have read nearly all of them. The problems with this book are many. The pace is very slow. The plot - not very strong. Too many characters are introduced, too quickly. Too much writing space devoted to non-essential details. But there also seems to be a snooty, snobbish tone to the entire book - almost as if Jeffrey had written it to impress his cronies in the lawyering arena of NYC. While I was reading - I failed to find anyone in the story to admire, to cheer for, and more importantly, to identify with. Although some may be fascinated by that particular class-based New York / New England culture of old money, politics and snobbishness, I am not. Yet Jeffrey revelled in laying this all out in a manner that suggested the reader should love and embrace this culture. Fortunately, Jeffrey moved away from this style in his later novels - all of which are marked by rich characters, from life's many diverse walkways. Mistress of Justice reinforced my belief that you cannot hit a home run every time up - and that's fine. And, I am grateful that the mistakes made in this novel are not found in any of Jeffrey's later works. If you are as big a Jeffrey Deaver fan as I am - and you have not yet read Mistress of Justice - steel yourself for possible disappointment.
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