The Tenth Case

The Tenth Case by Joseph Teller opens with an attorney, Harrison J. Walker AKA “Jaywalker” standing in front of a disciplinary committee. Jaywalker is suspended from the practice of law for three years due to his use of “creative” tactics and for the fact that he received an oral “token of gratitude” in the courthouse stairwell from a grateful client, while in full view of a security camera. He is told to pick ten of his unfinished cases to complete and hand the rest off.

Jaywalker’s tenth case will be his most challenging ever. Samara Moss, Jaywalker’s client, is a young, beautiful woman, who married an elderly billionaire when she was an eighteen-year-old waitress and sometime hooker. Samara’s husband is murdered and show more the police find a weapon matching her husband’s stab wounds, along with a bloody towel and bloody shirt stashed in Samara’s bathroom. Add this to the huge life insurance policy that Samara appears to have taken out on him just weeks before the murder, and the case becomes the one in ten case that can never be won no matter how good the defense.

This is a very good legal thriller. The book gives a compelling insight into the workings of the legal system, especially from the perspective of the defense. The character of Jaywalker was going through a sort of midlife crisis throughout the book, yet the author managed to let us see that internal conflict without making the character a boring man. Just enough of Jaywalker’s past is revealed to assist the reader in understanding the man, but not so much that we start skimming pages out of frustration. The end of the book was excellent! While I sometimes find enigmatic endings irritating, because the character of Samara was pretty much a cipher herself, it really worked here.

The Tenth Case is a great book for anyone who enjoys Scott Turow or the early Grisham novels. I look forward to reading many more novels by this excellent author show less

This novel starts off at an ethics hearing for Harrison J. Walker, a widowed and somewhat unscrupulous defense attorney who is put on a three year suspension after getting caught on video as a client demonstrated her appreciation of his legal assistance on her knees. Before his suspension begins, Jaywalker - as he is commonly and most appropriately known - convinces the judicial panel to allow him to finish ten cases already in progress, arguing that it would be unfair to his clients to have to find another lawyer at this late juncture. The first nine of those cases are completed efficiently and smoothly. After all, Jaywalker has a long record of getting his clients acquitted. His tenth case, however, is the case he was most drawn to. show more He is defending Samara Tannenbaum, a streetwise and uncouth ex-Vegas cocktail waitress, in her murder trial. Samara has been accused of murdering her much older, billionaire husband. Despite her cheap and easy past, she is the one client that Jaywalker was unable to take to bed the first time he defended her for while on her husband’s payroll.

The Tenth Case is a fun legal romp that reminds me a lot of Janet Evanovich’s Stephanie Plum novels in its tone and pacing. It is the perfect book to read for a pleasant diversion, so long as you don’t mind a hero with questionable personal morals. It was just that about Jaywalker that appealed to me. He’s not condescending. Instead, he’s down to earth and can relate to his clients. After all, don’t we all have our own demons? Deep down, he believes in what he does and often cares for his clients - and not just carnally. He believes in the legal system that he describes in interesting detail. His sarcastic take on his own life more than makes up for his occassional smarminess.

Joseph Teller told a fun and suspenseful tale. As someone who doesn’t read a great deal of legal thrillers, I appreciated the quick explanations that made their way effortlessly into his prose. He quickly had me rooting for his imperfect narrator. I’m looking forward to meeting up with Jaywalker again.

http://literatehousewife.wordpress.com/2008/10/24/112-the-tenth-case/ show less

Josheph Teller spent thirty-five years as a criminal defense attorney, and he uses his first hand knowledge of the criminal justice system to craft an intricate and well-thought-out legal drama that will hold readers' attention until the very last page. The Tenth Case is fast paced and exciting, with a tightly woven plot and interesting and well-written (if not always likable) characters. Teller's courtroom scenes are full of fascinating details, but it's never tedious. I completely enjoyed this book and found that I didn't want to put it down. It had enough twists to keep me guessing as well, and I was completely taken by surprise in the end.

Joseph Teller's novel, The Tenth Case, was true to life, notably with regards to the little nuances of the preparation for and the actual trial process. In one respect, it was a refreshing change from many legal thrillers I have read in the past in that, despite Jaywalker's blurring of convention, the author did not turn the story into a run for your life, action packed thrill ride with gun or fist fights. Just the same, the novel was plenty suspenseful as Jaywalker struggles to defend a woman whose innocence even he questions as the trial unfolds. There were a couple of slow spots in which I worried that the author had gone into too much detail. However, I also realize that my familiarity with the court process might have contributed show more to that feeling. Even then, the book would pick up again right away and not once did I lose interest in the story line or the characters.

Defense attorney Jaywalker is a bit of a maverick, not afraid of making his own rules as he goes along. It has obviously landed him in trouble, resulting in his three year suspension from practicing law. He has a conscience and a sense of fair play, however, that balances out the "bad boy" image. He’s easy to like and no doubt a good person to have on your side in a pinch. Samara Moss straddles that line as well. I never completely warmed up to her character, but it was easy to see how the past impacted the decisions she would make throughout her life.

Jaywalker is one of those complex characters that has many layers, some of which were peeled back enough to tempt the reader to want to learn more about him. I look forward to reading more by Joseph Teller and seeing what trouble Jaywalker can get out of next time. show less

Unlike Bronx Justice [bc:Bronx Justice|5930621|Bronx Justice|Joseph Teller|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1239148955s/5930621.jpg|6103063] which was more or less autobiographical, this novel has more humor and less of a sense of doom. It has some funny lines, related to the way things work, like cop-speak. The cop writes in his report: " 'did knowlingly and voluntarily grant them consent to affect entry of the premises.' Jaywalker would go to his grave in awe over how cops abused the English language. It was as though, in order to receive their guns and shields, they were first required to surrender their ablity to spell correctly, to follow the most basic rules of grammar and to write anything even remotely resembling a simple show more sentence."

Surprisingly this book turned out to be a real page-clicker (when read on a Kindle one can't really talk about turning a page.) The client, a young woman with a problematic past, has been accused of stabbing her elderly husband to death after taking out a $25 million term-life policy on him. Now this is where I got cranky. Samara is eighteen when they get married and they remain married for about 8 years. Fine, no problem. But when they met he was described as an old man of 61 who could have been her grandfather. Now I'm 63 and do creak in the morning (and often in the afternoon,) and yes I could be be, and am, the grandparent of an 18-year-old. But 61 is NOT that over-the-hill.

One quote that I must include. I would assume it reflects the mindset of the author: Long ago, he'd heard that Abraham Lincoln had once boasted that he would never represent a guilty client. Lincoln might have been a great man, but in Jaywalker's book that one remark if accurately quoted, branded him an absolute worthless criminal defense lawyer. Who was he to decide that help should be extended only to the virtuous and withheld from the sinners? To Jaywalker, it smacked of tax relief for only the wealthy. Luckily and in spite of his gross misunderstanding of the defender's role, he had somehow managed to find other work, thought perhaps tellingly, as a Republican.

Excellent book. I'm getting to be quite a Teller fan. show less

This was a fun one. An interesting legal thriller, if you like courtroom drama. Harrison J. Walker - Jaywalker - has been suspended for some creative tactics and a little bit of misbehaviour. Jaywalker takes his acquittal rate very seriously and his approach to cases is often very different from other lawyers, but his success and his dedication keep him from being disbarred completely. He convinces the judge to allow him to finish ten cases left on his calendar before beginning the suspension and he soon has the list whittled down to one case, the tenth case: Samara Moss. She's accused of murdering her billionaire husband and every single piece of evidence stacks up against her. Jaywalker is determined to win an acquittal. I enjoyed show more this very much (even though I found the ending farfetched). show less

Jaywalker is a spectacular defense attorney. He manages to get nearly all of his clients acquitted, which is miraculous when a 50% rate is fantastic. He does, sometimes, engage in rather shady practices to get these clients acquitted; nothing illegal, but behavior that is not encouraged. As a result, he faces suspension for three years, but he is allowed to complete ten ongoing cases before the suspension. The first nine are easy, but the tenth case turns out to be far from that.

I’m not familiar with law type stuff. See, that word choice should demonstrate to you how unfamiliar I am with it. It’s never been one of my interests and the most I’ve been exposed to is the video game series Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney which is vastly show more unlike real courtroom events. Obviously, because it’s a video game and designed to be fun and entertaining, while I’m assuming most court cases and such are not. As I said, I wouldn’t know.

Anyway, my lack of background made this book quite educational for me. I knew cases took forever, but it was interesting to read about what was happening when, why it took so long, what the “normal” practice for attorneys is, etc. This book is fiction so I’m not taking it all as cold hard fact, but it’s closer than I’ve ever come before. It also didn’t assume that I knew anything and the narrator explained everything. I did find the book to be a little repetitive by the end. The facts of Samara’s case were stated so many times I could have recited them at any point in the past couple of days. Also how impossible it is for Jaywalker to win, there’s just no chance, she’s going to jail, and so on. It did seem like a lot of the same there, and constant build-up like that means the reader already knows what the ending will be. I’ll admit the rest of the ending was clever, though.

I’ll probably be reading the next book in this new series. For now, I’d recommend this as a legal thriller of sorts that is easily accessible, even by ignorant me. show less