Never ask, "What else can go wrong?"
Stafford Lee Penney is the #1 lawyer in Biloxi, Mississippi. He’s successful, confident, and very good at what he does. Then his life begins to fall apart.
Spectacularly.
After Stafford Lee wins a high-profile murder trial, things start going wrong: personally, professionally, and pretty much everywhere else. At some point, I stopped wondering whether things could get worse and started wondering exactly what fresh disaster Patterson and Allen were going to throw at the poor man next.
For the most part, I liked Stafford Lee. I understood his anger and frustration as his carefully constructed life crumbled around him. That said, there were a few times when he behaved like a spoiled two-year-old, and I wanted to tell him to pull up his big-boy lawyer pants and deal with it. Sympathy only goes so far.
The mystery itself kept me guessing. I had my suspicions that the murders were connected to one particular man (or at least to someone associated with him), but I was never completely sure. I happily followed the clues, changed my mind a few times, and thought I had at least a reasonable handle on things. Yeah, I didn’t.
The ending completely blindsided me. Those are my favorite kinds of endings: the ones that make sense once everything is revealed but still manage to catch me looking in entirely the wrong direction.
The #1 Lawyer was a good, solid four-star read for me. It kept me engaged, I wanted to know what happened next, and I enjoyed the combination of courtroom drama, murder, and Stafford Lee’s spectacularly unraveling life. It didn’t keep me awake half the night, but household chores were definitely in danger.
The dust bunnies are history.
