Friday, April 28, 2023

The Judge's List

Book: The Judge's List
Series: The Whistler #2
Author: John Grisham

In The Whistler, Lacy Stoltz investigated a corrupt judge who was taking millions in bribes from a crime syndicate. She put the criminals away, but only after being attacked and nearly killed. Three years later, and approaching 40, she is tired of her work for the Florida Board on Judicial Conduct and ready for a change.

Then she meets a mysterious woman who is so frightened she uses a number of aliases. Jeri Crosby's father was murdered 20 years earlier in a case that remains unsolved and that has grown stone cold. But Jeri has a suspect whom she has become obsessed with and has stalked for two decades. Along the way, she has discovered other victims.

Suspicions are easy enough, but proof seems impossible. The man is brilliant, patient and always one step ahead of law enforcement. He is the most cunning of all serial killers. He knows forensics, police procedure and most important: he knows the law.

He is a judge, in Florida - under Lacy's jurisdiction.

He has a list, with the names of his victims and targets, all unsuspecting people unlucky enough to have crossed his path and wronged him in some way. How can Lacy pursue him without becoming the next name on his list?-Goodreads

Review: The premise of this book is great-a state judge who is also a serial killer? Sign me up! Lacy is reluctant to take the case, as Jeri, the woman reporting it is so scared she refuses to give Lacy all the information she needs to investigate, uses alias after alias and is very skittish. 

The first half of this book is very slow as Lacy doesn't want the case. We (reader/listener) know who the killer is so this is a 'cat and mouse' type of story. The judge was so unrealistically evil and an expert at seemingly EVERYTHING, it was completely unrealistic. 

Audiobook listeners: I started this as an audiobook and was excited to see Mary Louise Parker as the voice actor. I love her as an actress but this was terrible-she sounded exactly the same for every character, could have been reading note cards for the amount of emotion she put into it. I switched to the book version about mid-way through and it was much better. 

Grade: 2/5 

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