The Arraignment
May 26, 2009 by Joint Venture Marketing
“Lean, speedy and packing a wallop of a plot twist” was Publishers Weekly’s verdict of Steve Martini’s The Jury. Now Martini crafts yet another legal nail-biter featuring perennial favorite attorney Paul Madriani.
After a lawyer friend is killed along with his client in a hail of gunfire outside the federal courthouse in San Diego, Madriani takes on another client who he believes is involved at the edges of the double murder. He takes the case not to defend the man, but to find out who killed his friend and why. Madriani is tortured by questions of conflict, his duty to a client who may have killed his friend, and the need to know the truth, wondering whether he himself had been marked for death only to have a friend die in his place. Soon he is drawn into a vortex of crime that spans the Americas.
As he searches for the killer, Madriani rides the crest of a dangerous wave of international drug deals and people who murder for money. Suddenly he realizes it is not heroin or cocaine that resulted in the murder of his friend, but a priceless piece of pre-Columbian art-something so dazzling in the information it holds as to be one of the treasures of the ages.
In a quest that takes Madriani from California to Mexico and the Guatemalan border, he discovers that while the motive to kill may be driven by distant, exotic, and ancient artifacts, the killer, like a serpent, lies much closer at hand.
User Ratings and Reviews
3 Stars The Arraignment
This story starts off a little slow. You get to know the characters and get a feel for the setting. It is all based around this lawyer named Nick who gets killed. And how his friend Paul Madrini tries to help find out who did this. He gets into a couple of difficult situations in between.
Paul has to go through a whole bunch of people to find out all the missing links of the murder. He has to deal with insurance companies and Nick’s wives. Both his ex wife and his widowed wife. You have to sit tight and make it through the beginning chapters before the story really starts to pick up.
Once you start getting towards the end of this book the story starts to move at a very quick pase. When in the beginning you wanted to just put the book aside, but now yo0u can’t put it down. There are some pretty crazy action scenes towards the and then it happens. You find out who killed Nick and all the other guys and boy does it surprise you.
3 Stars Lawyers as Action Guys
This was my first Steve Martini book and I listened to the audio version. The audio is an abridged version so I am always a bit apprehensive as to what was left out.
I found the story to be interesting and it moved quickly. It was OK for light entertainment which is what I listen to when I am on the road and need to stay awake.
There were some technical errors concerning the weapons and their usage and the bad guys were really bad guys. I always have a little trouble with attorneys as action guys. I work with them all of the time (attorneys) and they are not very good as high speed low drag action oriented individuals.
But, I would definitely read another Martini book with the protagonist Paul Madriani.
3 Stars Some good spots here, but they are marred by the bad
Martini is an author that never quite gets it right. All of his books have some moments of high suspense and esoteric thoughts. In fact some of the action scenes here are written in a manner that escalates him to the top of the writers heap (though Martini does go over the top into the silly realm every once and a while). If you read this book, look for some of the more nuanced and downplayed moments of tension and think about how cleverly created they are. Madriani, the protagonist, is not often found in gun fights with dozens of soldiers and facing increadible odds. Instead, Martini places Madriani in smaller, more plausible predicaments and it works very very well. I wish that other authors who can hold a plot together a little better would take note of Martini’s gifts and incorporate them into their own works.
On the down side, the plot is terrible. It is not so apparant as you read the book, for Martini does a fine job of keeping you wondering exactly what is going on til the end. But when you reach the end and look back at what you have just read, I dare you to attempt to piece it together and call the actions of the characters here as lucid or rational. The more I think about the story, the more I wonder at the motives and resolutions and thus the less I enjoy the contemplation.
This is brain dead reading material here. Its fun, it clips along, and it will pass a few hours. Beyond that it is something to be avoided. Especially because their are so many better authors and books out there. Try Harlan Coben’s more recent titles, early Carl Hiassan, Dennis Lehane (Mystic River), or Patricia Cornwells first five or so novels.
2 Stars Not so much court-based…
I’ve read the whole Madriani’s episodes and I think this is the less interesting. In general, Steve Martini is really bright in portraying the defense-prosecutor in court fight. All of his “trial-based” books are very entertaining. I can’t say the same of this one – that is, in fact, a bit “far” from Martini’s usual milieu. It is, nevertheless, a good reading, but don’t expect Madriani at his best!
2 Stars It Happens in the Epilogue
Arraignment was my first Steve Martini book, and I followed the convoluted plot with interest. Much of the plot was implausible but still interesting and worth the time. However, when the denouement occurred in the epilogue, I was stunned. Mr. Martini ends the last chapter of his book with loose ends everywhere. This forces him to give the reader information in the epilogue that he has omitted in the plot. I will give Mr. Martini’s work one more chance, but I would not recommend Arraingment.
