Rating: 
Summary: A Little Disappointing
Review: The description of Paul's love interest started my downhill opinion of The Attorney. Mr. Martini seemed to be describing a Barbie Doll, not a real woman. I read the description, looked at the back cover picture of the author and thought "Yes, this is his fantasy woman" From that place in the book until the end I was sceptical and disappointed in the way he laid out his plot and characters.
Rating:
Summary: A little too long, with big plot holes at the end.
Review: Martini was wise to go back to his "bread and butter" protagonist, Paul Madriani. I always enjoyed this character and I was dismayed at such books as Martini's "Critical Mass," in which Martini discarded both Madriani and the legal thriller genre. Much of "The Attorney" is exciting and compelling. Paul Madriani, the hero of the title, tries to help Jonah Hale, an older man who has made a great deal of money in a lottery. Hale's granddaughter is missing, along with her drug-addicted mother. Along the way, Madriani encounters complications relating to his lover, Susan, who works with abused children, and Paul is nearly killed by a Mexican drug lord. Eventually, a key characters is murdered and Paul is the defendant's attorney at trial. As always, Martini is very good at writing courtroom sequences. As compelling as some of these courtroom scenes are, the book drags on for over 400 pages. The most problematic element of the book, however, is the tacked-on ending. Martini loves surprise endings. He delivers the surprise at the very end of the book and it simply does not hold water. There are plot holes at the end that are enormous and the author never plugs up the holes. I still enjoyed much of the book, but Martini should be more careful in making the plot more coherent. Surprise endings work only when they make sense.
Rating: 
Summary: Such a let down from past work...
Review: I hope Martini doesn't turn into one of those best selling novelists who begins to believe his own publicity and lets his storytelling slide. This book is not representative of the fine work that Martini has done in the past. It's almost like he had to slap a plot together but couldn't decide which way to go, so he ended up all over the map. And Mexico? What's up with that? I'm glad Madrini's moved south...the change seems to suit him. Maybe Martini will conjure up a better story the next time. This book isn't bad enough to keep me from reading more Martini...I'll just be a little less enthusiatic for a while.
Rating: 
Summary: An OK book, a great screenplay
Review: Martini's book is very well wriiten Madriani is a lawyer you just like and the courtroom drama is written with flair. Although Martini tends to make his protagonist a little too super-human: the car chases, Mexican Gang-land fights, over-the-top PI's are perhaps the result of too many action movies but it does all works well, a true triller. Suspend reality just a notch and enjoy. It's just a book after all, right.
Rating:
Summary: Killer revealed early
Review: I love the Steve Martini novels. Normally I'm always guessing until the end. In this one it was obvious early on "who done it".
Rating: 
Summary: The Attorney is Back
Review: Paul Madriani has moved to San Diego, and as usual becomes involved in another homicide case. Matini keeps the reader in the dark about the killer until the climax, dropping a few clues here and there, including a few red herrings. The courtroom scenes are solid, and form the heart of the novel, but the mystery will keep readers interested until the past page.
Rating:
Summary: A good start - but no finish
Review: OK, I'm a big Steve Martini fan also. In the beginning of this book it seems very promising. It almost seemed like after he had the malicious Zo Suade offed that he lost his train of thought. A rather air tight case of circumstancial evidence builds against Paul Madriani's client and you wait for a plausable explanation that it was really someone else. Suddenly he is off to Mexico and after a series of improbable events the mystery is solved...or is it? Borrowing heavily from Scott Thurow's Presumed Innocent, Martini throws in a little twist at the end. To my mind it was an unsatisfying finish to a book that showed promise. I hope this is an aberation and that his next one will find him returning to form.
Rating: 
Summary: A major disappointment from a Steve Martini fan
Review: I tried for several weeks to get into this book, and I simply couldn't do it. Each chapter would invariably cause me to go back and re-read a paragraph, and each time I concluded that the editor should have donea better job. Perhaps Mr. Martini has tired of re-introducing the same protagonist in each Paul Madriani novel, but I found the writing so poor that I was unable to get the book moving. The "sensual" portions are cheesy in a "made-for-TV-movie" kind of way, and he often refers to events in an ambiguous fashion. For instance, he describes his motivation for moving to the west coast and then introduces his daughter as "between elementary school and junior high and not looking forward to the move." Several paragraphs later, he recalls his daughter trying to convince him that they _should_ move to the west coast. Re-read the previous page to determine that the move which she was dreading was _the_move_to_junior_high_... Just poor writing, in my opinion, and each succeeding paragraph brought with it another similarly annoying issue. I just finished reading Critical Mass, and I thought it was a splendid read. Not unlike the previous Paul Madriani novels, I couldn't put the book down. The Attorney, sadly, I can't bring myself to pick back up. Pick it up yourself at your own risk.
Rating:
Summary: Courtroom Drama, Surprise Ending
Review: Steve Martini has been around a few courtrooms in his day and it shows. Martini's California lawyer Paul Madriani decides to leave his hometown of Sacramento to get away from memories of his wife's untimely death. He has been courting Susan McKay, the director of Child Protective Services in San Diego. He decides its time to relocate to that city. In San Diego he is approached by former client Jonah Hale. In the early days of Madriani's practice, he won a hard fought battle to secure a railroad pension for Hale. An $87 million lottery jackpot has since made this victory irrelevant, but Hale respects Madriani's abilities. Hale hires Madriani to help him find his granddaughter. Hale believes the child has been kidnapped from his custody by his ex-con daughter assisted by a bitter manhating ideologue who is singularly lacking in common sense. The outspoken Hale makes no bones about his hatred for the suspected kidnapper, especially when she threatens to expose him [falsely we assume] as a child molester. Some of his unconsidered remarks might even be construed as threats. And indeed they are taken as threats when the kidnapper is found shot to death. Soon his client is on trial for murder and Madriani is facing trials of his own. People are trying to kill him and a key witness turns up dead. Susan McKay is called as a witness in the case and is not helpful to the defense. There are some questionable twists in the parts of the plot. Would the police really be so unconcerned about the kidnapping? Hale did have legal custody. But, the courtroom scenes are riveting and, with the exception of the unlikely event of McKay as a witness, realistic. Martini conveys the despair Madriani feels about what is turning into a losing battle for his client's future. The ending is dramatic. True to Martini's style no one is above suspicion.
Rating:
Summary: Never Had a Clue!
Review: The Attorney is a story that will keep you interested from page 1 until "the end". The characters are interesting and diversified. The dialogue is crisp and realistic. And the author constantly keeps the reader wondering whether the defendant could really be guilty. The way in which Steve Martini weaves the tale and carries us along his path to the final "shocking" conclusion makes for very entertaining reading. I was gripped all along and while I sometimes enjoy reading a book only to be disappointed at the end...in The Attorney I was totally satisfied to the very last word. It's a MUST READ!
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