One of the great American pleasures of summer is sitting on a beach somewhere, ripping through some light reading, being compelled to turn the pages as fast as you can read them by the pulse-pounding story therein.
To do just that, many turn to legal thrillers, which are a staple of best-seller lists and really exploded with the publication of John Grisham’s The Firm in 1991.
Steve Martini is a prolific author of just this type of book. He has written several centered on one character, Paul Madriani. Madriani practices with his partner Harry Hinds in San Diego. He is, of course, a criminal lawyer, and in Shadow of Power is persuaded to defend a white supremacist in the high profile killing of a provacative author.
Martini’s strength is writing characters that have a strong taste of authenticity. Madriani feels like a real guy, not some plastic boiler-plate hero. In addition to being believable, Madriani is eminently likeable. It’s hard not to pull for him, and the people he works with which include his investigator, a large African American named Herman and his aforementioned partner, Hinds.
In Shadow of Power, Martini has produced an engrossing thriller. The premise, which involves a wildly popular but muckraking author (think a liberal version of Ann Coulter) is at times tenuous, but since the author is the victim, thankfully not too much rests on that.
The accused is the son of a an old friend of Madriani, and of course, all of the initial evidence points to him as the killer.
How Madriani explained away every piece of evidence is what kept me turning the pages. But it should be noted that this really isn’t a thriller. Whereas Grisham’s novels grabbed you by the throat and forced you to keep reading, Shadow of Power is more likely to engage your brain and make you try to figure out whodunnit.
Martini follows many of the genre’s conventions, right up to the confession at the end by the killer, putting a nice bow of closure on the story, so there is nothing particularly original about it’s plot or construction.
However, Shadow of Power is still well worth a read if you enjoy legal dramas. As I stated earlier, the characters are engaging, real and likeable. It is a solid, if not spectacular, novel.
