Taylor Lockwood, jazz-playing paralegal heroine of Mistress of Justice, is one of the smart, sassy heroines in whom Jeffery Deaver specialised before he invented the austere, paralysed criminalist Lincoln Rhyme. Like Rune in Manhattan Is My Beat, Taylor is clever, but not quite as good at things as she thinks she is--she trusts a few too many people and lets her preconceptions get in her way; Deaver has always done a nice line in the detective who gets things wrong quite a lot of the time. Taylor is brought in by Reece, a Wall Street hot-shot, to work out who has stolen a crucial document and where they have hidden it. Along the way, she uncovers most of the dirty little secrets of the partners of the firm and finds herself having to exercise judgement about each of them; she
… read more...has refused to follow her father into the law because of her music, but she finds herself caught up in justice all the same. This is an early book that Deaver has reworked--it has the technical slickness that is now his hallmark, but keeps the joie de vivre that it has to some extent replaced. --Roz KaveneyRead More read less...