Avery, a promising young law clerk to Supreme Court Justice Howard Wynn, becomes her boss's power of attorney after he falls into a coma. As Justice Wynn held a powerful swing vote, Avery suddenly finds herself having to make difficult, high profile decisions. On top of all this, she uncovers secret links between Wynn and a controversial new biotech case coming before the court. Following the chess-like clues that Wynn left behind, Avery must make dangerous moves in this suspenseful, DC politics novel.
If you're in the mood for a legal thriller a la John Grisham, this is a solid pick. It includes all branches of government, multiple states and countries, and both the legal and medical fields, demonstrating that Stacey Abrams is no slouch. As someone who lived in DC for 25 years, I found the local references (Kramerbooks, anyone?) especially fun – especially since Avery (the SCOTUS Clerk) lived four blocks from my old place. :)
Praise by well-known authors for "While Justice Sleeps" promised a high-stakes thriller with a masterfully crafted plot, an authentic voice, and an utterly compelling main character – but the book delivered none of that. Granted, the first third of the book with numerous setups and mysterious connections between various characters had me intrigued. But things quickly went downhill from there. The narrative voice was all over the place, switching randomly from omniscient POV to deep POV to internal thoughts of multiple characters, including some very minor ones. In many scenes, this kind of head-hopping happened from one sentence to the next, resulting in a disjointed reading experience with neither character growth nor consistency. The promised high stakes also remained rather unclear, with a lot of exposition and legal lingo filling the pages, trying to make the story sound more sophisticated than it actually is. Even the final showdown lacked any …
Praise by well-known authors for "While Justice Sleeps" promised a high-stakes thriller with a masterfully crafted plot, an authentic voice, and an utterly compelling main character – but the book delivered none of that. Granted, the first third of the book with numerous setups and mysterious connections between various characters had me intrigued. But things quickly went downhill from there. The narrative voice was all over the place, switching randomly from omniscient POV to deep POV to internal thoughts of multiple characters, including some very minor ones. In many scenes, this kind of head-hopping happened from one sentence to the next, resulting in a disjointed reading experience with neither character growth nor consistency. The promised high stakes also remained rather unclear, with a lot of exposition and legal lingo filling the pages, trying to make the story sound more sophisticated than it actually is. Even the final showdown lacked any thrilling action and consisted of a boring courtroom scene with legal arguments being rattled off instead. Overall, "While Justice Sleeps" reads like an early draft written by someone with the necessary background knowledge and passion but lacking the required skill on the page to turn an ambitious idea into a well-crafted story. A good editor maybe would have been able to save this half-assed conspiracy thriller, but apparently none was involved. I can only assume that this book was very low on Stacey Abrams's list of priorities, given the key role she's currently playing in the fight for democracy in the US. And while I very much appreciate her efforts and dedication to this much more important political cause, I cannot say the same for her attempts at writing fiction. Thus, two stars for premise and ambition.
This was closer to a Dan Brown or John Grisham novel than I’d anticipated: a taut thriller that occasionally stretches plausibility but is a lot of fun from beginning to end. It turns out Stacey Abrams can do it all. I hope there’s a movie.
