While Justice Sleeps

While Justice Sleeps by Stacey Abrams is a thrill ride through the Supreme Court. 

When Justice Howard Wynn slips into a coma, his clerk Avery Keene is as shocked as everyone else that she is his power of attorney. Not his son or his estranged wife, but a law clerk with whom he has only a working relationship.

Justice Wynn is often the swing vote on and otherwise 4-4 court. Nearing the end of the session, there are still some big cases to decide. And it is starting to seem that one of them is related to what happened to the Justice.

Keene has a mystery to solve and little time to do it. Not helping her deadline is the fact that the NSA and FBI think it is fishy that she was named his executor. 

Abrams is a brilliant legal and political mind. She has the knowledge and has had the access to create a story that goes deeper into D.C. politics than most. 

If you are looking for a completely engrossing thrill ride, this is the book you are looking for. 

Abrams, Stacey. (2021). While Justice Sleeps. New York: Doubleday.

The Guilty (Will Robie #4)

The Guilty by David Baldacci is the fourth book in his Will Robie series about a CIA assassin.

Will Robie is one of the best snipers the CIA has in its secret black book. He has been on numerous assignments and has pulled them off professionally. But on his latest mission something goes wrong and an innocent is killed along with his target.

When Robie gets word that his father is on trial for murder, his first response is to try to re-bury the past. But after a fail attempt at work, he decides to head to the Gulf Coast of Mississippi to the town of Cantrell - a town he left 22 years ago with no intention of ever returning.

After some information hunting - like pulling teeth to get the locals to talk to someone who left - he puts together that his dad is accused of killing a man who was acquitted of murder himself. Robie will get to the bottom of what happened, but unlike his day job, the target is undefined.

Baldacci is a great writer of suspense and mystery novels. Will Robie is a great character who can take care of himself even within the twists and turns of this plot. Great series for fans of good books!

Baldacci, David. (2015). The Guilty. New York: Grand Central Publishing.

To Kill A Mockingbird

To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee has won many awards - including the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction - with good reason: it is an important and excellent book.

Jean Louise "Scout" Finch and her brother Jem live in the Maycomb, Alabama. Their father is Atticus Finch, a lawyer, who is about to go to trial defending a black man who is accused of raping a white woman - in 1935... in the South.

Scout and Jem are raised by their father and the cook, Calpurnia. As their world view slowly grows - first with their neighborhood, then school and the larger town - Scout learns lessons about life. Written with intelligence and wit, Lee captures the development of childhood in a time of racial prejudice. When the trial starts, she must learn to stop fighting the people who say mean things about her father.

And as the trial unfolds, the family reflects on the state of affairs - how some people can treat other differently based only on the color of their skin, not on their own merit. And how people can ignore fact in the face of that prejudice.

Though written in 1960 and set in 1935, To Kill A Mockingbird still has lessons to teach readers. It is a sad fact that we, as a society, are not as evolved as we like to think and books like this one are important lenses into our past and possible futures.

Lee, Harper. (1960). To Kill a Mockingbird. New York: Harper.