August 13, 2006
When my book review editor called to tell me this reviewing gig was basically ending, one of the reasons she called was also to tell me to, uh, not plan on reviewing whatever I was currently reading. I was reading KILL ALL THE LAWYERS by Paul Levine and I finished it yesterday.

Some bittersweet irony here. The first novel I ever reviewed was for The Armchair Detective and it was FOOL ME TWICE by Paul Levine. That seemed like a license to steal. Great book and I promptly went out and bought all of his books. He took a few years off to write for TV (JAG, among others) and now he's back with a new comic mystery series dubbed the Solomon vs Lord novels, the principle characters being attorneys Steve Solomon and Victoria Lord. KILL ALL THE LAWYERS is the third in this series, after SOLOMON VS. LORD and THE DEEP BLUE ALIBI.

KILL ALL THE LAWYERS
by Paul Levine
Bantam Books
Paperback original. $6.99. 352 Pages
ISBN: 0-440-24275-4
Publication: August5 29, 2006

In Paul Levine's "Kill All The Lawyers," Steve Solomon finds himself facing down an old client, radio psychologist Dr. Bill Kreeger. Years before, Steve defended Kreeger in a murder case, getting the charges dropped to manslaughter, with Kreeger serving 6 years. The spin is that Steve could have gotten Kreeger off had he not found potential evidence of a previous, similar murder and surreptitiously turned it over to the prosecution.

Now Kreeger's out of prison, has his own radio talk show and is determined to destroy Steve's career... and probably his life. It is a comic version--if that's possible--of "Cape Fear," with Kreeger stalking Steve and manipulating events so Steve appears to be running down a cattle chute to his own destruction.

Meanwhile, on the comic front, Steve and Victoria are shopping for condos to move into together, Steve's brilliant and quirky 12-year-old nephew, Bobbie, now age 12, has discovered girls, and Victoria's mother, Queen Irene, has an important announcement to make. Oh, and Steve's dad has decided to become an orthodox Jew... sort of.

KILL ALL THE LAWYERS isn't exactly a mystery. It's more of a suspense novel. Kreeger does such a great job of pushing all of Steve's buttons and leading him into trouble of his own making that it's not entirely clear to the reader--until the end--if Kreeger is just a misunderstood good guy who took the fall for someone else, or a brilliant psychopath really intent on paying Steve back for his six years in prison. The novel is ultimately rather sweet with a satisfactory and exciting climax, with plenty of laughs along the way. Levine's books remain, as ever, fully entertaining.