Krishna
Equally famous as Master of the Game, this book ranks very high on Sydney Sheldon’s books. Expertly crafted with the unique style of storytelling that the author has perfected, it holds you in its thrall until the very end.
The first scene, where Robert Di Silva is trying to nail Michael Moretti the mafia boss and it all rests in the hands of one mobster, Camillo Stela, who has agreed to testify against Michael. Jennifer Parker, a rookie law assistant, gives an envelope to the witness in a break – the envelope that was handed to her by Robert via an assistant to give to Stela – and all hell breaks loose from that moment on. What she delivered was a dead canary with the neck broken and the case, along with Robert’s hopes of being elected governor on the strength of the victory in this case, both end up in smoke. Jennifer wanted to be a lawyer like her dad from a very young age and this was a devastating blow to her that her official career was over a mere four hours after it started.
When she tries to survive by the lowly act of issuing subpoena, she is informed that disbarment proceedings are to be launched against her by a livid Robert Di Silva. He asks a top attorney in town to personally take care of it. He gives it to Adam Werner, who is his son in law angling for the District Attorney post. After Adam checks everything out, he recommends that the proceedings to disbar her be dropped, much to the anger of Robert.
She devises clever ways to serve difficult subpoenas.
When she takes up an impossible case to defend a murderer, she finds to her horror that Robert de Silva himself comes to court as a prosecutor, to crush her once for all. She triumphs and is noticed by Michael Moretti.
She also has fallen for Adam Warner and has constant sex with him even after knowing that he is married already, despite her mother’s life being earlier ruined by her father’s infidelity. Meanwhile Michael is thinking of hiring a young lawyer for the Family and increasingly thinks of Jennifer.
She gets a paternity suit decided in her favour by undoubtedly questionable means, which may not stand up in a real court! (Was DNA evidence not available when the book was written? God, is the book that old? )
There are episodes obviously put there as fillers: they do have a twist but have absolutely nothing to do with the story itself. For instance, the nice woman whom the daughter and the son in law had admitted to an asylum that Jennifer is determined to release; the accident victim from a truck company – the company having almost gotten away with the crime.
Main story? Adam is surely in love with Jennifer but stands for the Senate and can have no blemish in the past including any affairs. Michael Moretti is intrigued and increasingly drawn to Jennifer.
Adam’s wife tricks Jennifer into believing that she is OK with Adam marrying Jennifer and when Jennifer finds herself pregnant, also reveals that she is pregnant. Now Adam is trapped into the marriage and Jen has the child in a faraway place.
Michael Moretti charms her in a dinner one evening. When her son is kidnapped by a vicious murderer who is enraged about her, she calls Moretti in desperation and he pulls all the stops to get him back. So starts her relationship with Michael, alienating all her friends and well wishers. One by one they leave her.
She connects with Adam and instantly has sex with him, throwing consequences to the winds. But Joshua’s head injury, when they return back, causes him to die, she completely loses it.
She then loses her son Joshua and Adam learns that she is the Mafa’s counsel as well as the fact that she has a son, both of which devastates him. This is done by the testimony of the previous lawyer of the mafia who, when he realizes that Moretti wants to kill him, goes straight to Adam Warner and spills the beans.
Moretti wrongly suspects and kills his loyal deputies until he realizes that Nick Vito lied to him saying he had killed the lawyer. Jennifer is arrested in Singapore.
The events gather frenetic pace where Michael finds out that Jennifer was the girlfriend of Adam and thinks she has been betraying him all along and his plots to kill both Adam and Jennifer and how it all exhilaratingly ends.
Great story. Well told. Lightweight but who cares? All Sheldon’s stories are lightweight.
8 / 10
– – Krishna