Blind Justice

Review of Blind Justice by James Scott Bell

Overview from www.barnesandnoble.com: His wife has left him. He's drinking again. And his five-year-old daughter is in the middle of it all. When a judge calls him "a disgrace to the legal profession," Jake starts thinking things might be better for everyone if he wasn't around anymore.

Then a childhood friend's mother phones him. Her son, Howie, has been accused of murdering his wife. Jake takes the seemingly hopeless case in a last-ditch effort to save his client and his fading career.

Meanwhile, Howie's little sister, Lindsay, has grown into a beautiful woman. Though Jake is drawn to her, there's something about her he doesn't understand, even though it may be the very thing he needs to reclaim his humanity.

With the evidence mounting against his client, and a web of corruption closing around them both, Jake Denney faces the fight of his life--not only in the courtroom, but in the depths of his own soul.

My Review:

The way this book starts out is just a little bit sneaky. We begin with Howie. I presumed that he would be the main character. But I knew that our author wrote Legal Thrillers and Howie doesn’t sound at all like a lawyer.

Looks can be deceiving but as the opening continues on it becomes apparent that Howie is probably a murder suspect. No lawyer in the first scene.

Enter Jake. Ah, here is our lawyer, or rather a sad excuse for one. He apparently hasn’t had any paying clients in a long time since his rent is and has been due to his office land lord for quite some time. His friend/landlord has just gotten to insisting that Jake give it to him which Jack knows isn’t easy for him.

Then the last straw. His ex-wife threatens to take his daughter away from him.

Meanwhile Howie becomes a murder suspect after being stabbed himself. His parents remember Howie’s old friend Jake and ask him to represent him in court.

Things go from bad to worse though when Howie confesses to the murder from his hospital room just as a police officer walks into the room.

Jake still hopes that he is innocent. After all, Howie admits that he doesn’t remember stabbing his wife and he remembers the presence of another person in the room. Unfortunately for Jake, Howie is convinced that the other person is the devil.

Certain that the devil was nowhere near the crime scene, Jake thinks that maybe he can somehow prove that Howie might be crazy. Maybe he did see someone else in the room but not the devil. Maybe it was just someone who looked like him. Or just a defense mechanism.

As the trial continues, Jake must also confront his own personal demons. His alcohol problems, his inability to relate to his father or anyone who reminds him or his father, his attempts to relate to his daughter,  and his growing attraction to Howie’s sister are just a few of the problems he faces in addition to trying to when Howie’s case.

I dare not say too much more about what happens next but I will say that I highly recommend this one. I had high expectations going into it too after reading Mr. Scott Bell’s writing books (which I really liked). “Let’s see what he’s got,” was the attitude I had in reading it. “Let’s see if he writes as well as he tells his students to.”

I can honestly say that he delivers. I wasn’t disappointed.