Rating: 
Summary: Ugly main characters
Review: The book opens up with the two main characters (Sara, Jared) and their local grocery store owner friend (Mickey) trash this old lady who comes into the store with a store coupon for Cheerios only to find there are no Cheerios on the shelf. She camplains to Mickey about it and instead of simply saying he was sorry and giving her a 'rain check' he and Sara and Jared light into her like rabid dogs. I mean it was disgusting. I know quite a few grocery store owners (big cities and small) and none would dare to speak to customer that way or let his friends do so. Sara and Jared are rude offensive arseholes. I took the book back to the library next day. No thank you.
Rating: 
Summary: so bad, it hurts.
Review: Sara Tate, an assistant district attorney, has gottne ordinary buglary case on her first day on the job. The case changes to murder and she realizes it is anything but ordinary.
Jared, her busband, gets a client who will bolster his chances of becoming a partner in a law firm. The catch: he will square off against his wife, and anything less than acquittal results in death for the one he loves.
Will they be able to surmount the difficulties at home? And what will be the price of their rivalry, because no matter who wins he loses.
Brad Meltzer gets high marks for content; a couple slugging out it out in the courtroom is indeed fertile land in the malnourished plains of legal fiction.
Still Dead Even is no immacaulate conception. The dialogue is puerile, the plot asinine, the ending insignificant. No one stands up to the thugs as they go around harassing Jared and Sara.
The novel resembles a house painter's effort on canvas.
Rating: 
Summary: LARGELY FORGETTABLE, BUT A GOOD READ
Review: This BM book didn't do it for me the way the others did. It was compelling reading, but largely forgettable. Check out BM's other books for better bets.
Rating:
Summary: Meltzer is improving-- but not much
Review: Meltzer is an interesting author. His prose is interesting and well done. However, he has several significant limitations:1. His plots are too predictable. 2. His characters remind me of cartoon characters. Too flat. They always whine. Too much self doubt. 3. His lawyers are always the dumbest lawyers in literature with the hero or heroine role. Don't they teach ethics in law school anymore. His hero always seem to have failed ethics. Once they cross the ethical line they never seem smart enough to know how to correct the situation. I wish the author wrote about lawyers that knew the law. This is a good book to read in the waiting room. It is mildly entertaining but I never objected if I was interrupted while reading.
Rating:
Summary: dissapointing and not exciting...
Review: Dead Even is the second Brad Meltzer book I have read, after the First Counsel. Dead Even is worse in every respect and I would not recommend it. I loved The First Counsel, but Dead Even has none of the suspense or intrigue that made The First Counsel so exciting. Jared is the defense attorney and Sara is the DA on a burgerly case that soon turns into big trouble for the husband and wife. Both are threatened with a win or your spouse dies proposition. Quite an intriguing plot, but it seems Meltzer struggled finding circumstances that would result in that plot twist. It seems like all of the bad guys exist in this book solely to mess up Sara and Jared. It seems like Meltzer forces the action. The book is chugging along, being mildly entertaining, when suddenly it starts being incredibly exciting for a few pages. Sara and Jared are trying to win their cases to save the other, but at the same time they can't tell each other what they are doing. This leads to them growing apart and possibly becoming attracted to other people. Before, I had never felt like there marriage was in danger from the bad guys, but when Jared and Sara's own feelings started going in other directions and kisses and allegations of affairs started flying, I really felt interested in their fate. Would Sara and Jared's marriage be destroyed, not by the somewhat comical bad guys, but by their own mistrust for each other? Unfortanatley, Meltzer wastes this intrigue and suspense by immediately switching gears and having Sara and Jared resolve their conflict. Then from that point on, the book fizzles out into a boring conclusion. Dead Even was boring because it didn't have a gripping, exciting background like the White House. Just two lawyers caught in a contrived situation. Also, Meltzer's dialogue can get somewhat old. Does everyone have to be a comedian?
| 
