Mistress of Justice

Mistress of Justice – Jeffery Deaver

One of Jeffery Deaver’s earlier books. According to the Forward in the book, Deaver tells his readers that he’s actually “rewritten” the book. He was satisfied with his original story, but experience must have told him that he could have done a bit better -maybe make it a tad more suspenseful, flesh out the characters, and incorporate elements to suck in the reader a bit more. Regardless, whatever he did worked. Although I never read the original version, this book has all the elements that make the story a great thriller.

Now, I THINK that this original book was written before the days of John Grisham. I mention this because this book is a “legal” thriller, and it might be tempting to say that Deaver ripped off a lot of lawyer factoids and legal legends from Grisham.  Whenever we read a John Grisham book about the profession, we read about people who care more about making gobs of money than actually being a crusader for law. Everyone works hundreds of hours per week and learns the secrets of manipulating the legal process etc. etc.   We get a bit of that here, but those who know Jeffery Deaver know that he’s a very thorough researcher of his subjects, and if the original book was written back in 1992, we can safely say that Deaver “got there first”.

Our protagonist is Taylor Lockwood. She’s a late-twenties, single paralegal working for one of those mega Wall Street firms where power and cocaine rule.  The firm is about to undergo a major merger that will affect the way the firm does business, as well as probably sever some payroll. Strange things start happening, and one of the smarter young lawyers, Mitchell Reece, can feel that unscrupulous behavior is in the air. When a crucial document goes missing, Mitchell “hires” Taylor to play detective to uncover the facts.

Not sure if such a situation would ever happen in the real world, but give Mitchell credit. He hired the right person. Taylor is hard core, and plows right into her ‘assignment’.  We also get to learn and understand more about Taylor. Her overly ambitious lawyer-father, her moonlighting as a jazz pianist, and her calm resilience of who she is despite swimming in a sea of piranhas.  Had this been a true story, I doubt if anyone could have been as successful as Taylor – she moves from point A to point B throughout the story quite fast, but truth belongs in non-fiction.

This book is also a lot less ‘creepy’ than many of Deaver’s works. True, we meet some characters that make us shudder a bit, but unlike the Lincoln Rhyme books that deal with demented psychopaths with strange fetishes, this one is rather harmless in comparison.

Although this is one of his earlier works, it’s definitely Deaver. If you like the majority of Jeffery Deaver’s books, this one won’t disappoint. I’m somewhat curious, however, to know how this ‘revised’ version stacks up against the ‘original’.