The Tenth Case - Joseph Teller

...York City for continually bending the rules in his favour. The Court has granted him a chance to finish just ten cases before his suspension and Jaywalker is determined that his excellent tack record for acquittals will remain.


However, his last case may prove more tricky than the usual cases he takes on. Samara Tannenbaum is accused of murdering her incredibly rich elderly husband. The evidence against her is staggering; a beautiful ...
...her husband at the time of his murder, clothes smothered in blood stains found at her apartment and most damning of all, a life insurance policy for millions taken out months before his death signed by her that would ensure his estate would return to her if he should die within six months.


Jaywalker believes he has hit rock bottom but his overwhelming desire for Samara keeps him plodding on with her case even if he does believe ... more

Story Snapshot...

Harrison J Walker (known as Jaywalker) is about to be suspended for 3 years from his profession as a Criminal Defence Lawyer in New York City for continually bending the rules in his favour. The Court has granted him a chance to finish just ten cases before his suspension and Jaywalker is determined that his excellent tack record for acquittals will remain.

However, his last case may prove more tricky than the usual cases he takes on. Samara Tannenbaum is accused of murdering her incredibly rich elderly husband. The evidence against her is staggering; a beautiful ex prostitute who was heard having a screaming match with her husband at the time of his murder, clothes smothered in blood stains found at her apartment and most damning of all, a life insurance policy for millions taken out months before his death signed by her that would ensure his estate would return to her if he should die within six months.

Jaywalker believes he has hit rock bottom but his overwhelming desire for Samara keeps him plodding on with her case even if he does believe she is guilty. After a while, her constant denials finally get to him and he starts to wonder if this crime is just too perfect - was Samara framed?

Review...

This story is certainly full of suspense, especially towards the latter part of the book as this is mainly cantered around the court room. This section is extremely pacey, helped along by the fact that most of the chapters involve word by word accounts and conversations between the prosecutor and witness or the defence and the witness. Due to the nature of the scene, these conversations were often short and to the point which I made very quick work of quickly flicking through each page!

However, I found myself quickly flicking through pages for another reason that wasn’t as positive and in fact I found that I couldn’t involve myself in the story as much as I would have liked to and that was because I felt there were fundamental flaws with the way in which the book was written. Quite often I felt that I was experiencing some kind of déjà vu when reading some sentences only to realise that I had read the exact same ( or at least fairly similar!) sentence a couple of pages before.

For instance, I read a section where Samara’s appalling childhood was explained only for exactly the same thing to be repeated literally pages later in what seemed word for word in a conversation between Samara and Jaywalker. To add insult to injury, it was once again repeated (although differently I’ll admit!) in the courtroom. It wasn’t that it was repeated as often this happens with stories if the perspective is changing but it was more the similar language that was used that really put me off.

I thought that this really had an excellent story, and I did find it interesting that the main character, Jaywalker, was a lawyer rather than a detective or someone central to the crime as with most books of the same ilk. Quite often, the author added some thoughtful and interesting points about the courtroom and its rules, I particularly liked the gentle sparring that occurred between him and the prosecutor as well as descriptions of tactics used in courtrooms to win over juries.

Nevertheless, these interesting tit-bits provided only a small section of the book and for a lot of the rest, I was doing some serious skim reading. I’ve sat here for a while now trying to put into words why I skim read so much, but I cannot put it very eloquently as it comes down to this: it just wasn’t very interesting. Before even looking up the author Joseph Teller, it is more than obvious that he has some kind of interest in the law and it wasn’t a surprise to find out that Teller was a criminal defence attorney. (or perhaps he still is!) the problem is that he is so involved in his career and seems so passionate about that side of the law that he seems to sometimes forget that the average reader isn’t at all interested in every small miniscule detail of everything involved with a case. It simply didn’t make for interesting reading at all.

Added to this, I got half way through the book before it became blindingly obvious “whodunit”. After that, although it was slightly amusing reading and waiting for the characters work it out, the final bit of enjoyment had gone for me. Despite getting the feeling that the author was trying to create a main protagonist whom (he thought!) was based on him, Jaywalker is actually an interesting character; a handsome older man; smart, cheeky and successful so it wasn’t too troublesome reading until the end. What didn’t ring true however was that he didn’t figure out what had happened right to the very last minute. Throughout the book a big deal is made of how he is one of the best attorneys in New York, how he is incredibly smart and intelligent so the fact that he didn’t figure the murder out sooner is just incredible.

Another point that proved to be a bit of a let down was the central character of Jaywalker himself. The back cover blurb states that Jaywalker is a bit of a maverick and this case is his last ditch before he is suspended. Upon reading the first couple of pages, I was indeed intrigued by him and hoped he would live up to my expectations of being an interesting and quirky main character; he'd "bent" the rules to get his own way on decisions on his cases and had received sexual favours in stairwells that had been caught on tape. However, this was the last I saw of the interesting and cheeky "maverick" Jaywalker, as the rest of the time he seemed fairly ordinary and uninteresting. SUCH a let down!

Summary...

Overall, this was a bit of a let down. It was a bit of a double edged sword; on the one hand it was interesting because of the authors incredible knowledge of the legal world but that was also its downfall. He had great characters and a good plot but his writing style could do with a bit of honing and his facts and descriptions major culling in places! It had promise but it just didn’t deliver.  

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