Taylor Lockwood juggles twin careers as a struggling jazz
musician in seedy Manhattan clubs and a paralegal at the
genteel Wall Street law firm of Hubbard, White & Willis.
When a multimillion-dollar promissory note is stolen from
his office, Mitchell Reece, a young trial lawyer,
desperately enlists her aid to save both his career and,
very possibly, the firm itself. Taylor agrees, intrigued
by both the brilliant attorney and the offbeat assignment.
As she plays detective, she learns that beneath the
Victorian facades of the firm and its partners are
simmering caldrons of dark secrets that increasingly blur
the line between business and pleasure, and life and
death. Jeffery Wilds Deaver gives us a shocking look at
the stratosphere of New York business and society in this
stylish book, which is filled with the wholly real
characters, right-on dialogue, and unpredictable plot
twists he's known for. Its gut-wrenching ending is more
shocking than Presumed Innocent's. The nonstop action in
Mistress of Justice moves from tension-filled courtrooms
to East Village performance spaces, from Hell's Kitchen
bordellos to lavish country homes and hushed Midtown clubs
where careers, and even lives, are manipulated like so
many business deals. The firms, the families and their
money may date from the last century, but the ambition and
greed are totally up to date and mean nothing but danger
for a young upstart like Taylor Lockwood--danger in more
ways than she can guess.