Kill All the Lawyers

Isn't it romantic?:
Though I've not really researched the topic, my guess is that the first mystery solving couple appeared in Dashiell Hammett's The Thin Man. Subsequent to Nick and Nora Charles, there have been all sorts of mysteries featuring couples; probably the most popular one currently going is Faye Kellerman's series with Peter and Rina Decker. Kellerman should watch out, however: Paul Levine's series featuring Steve Solomon and Victoria Lord is good enough to give the Deckers a run for their money. Kill All The Lawyers is the third in the "Solomon vs. Lord" series. In this novel, an old misdeed of Steve's has come back to haunt him. There was one time when he purposely lost a case; victory would have been simple, but he knew his client was guilty of multiple murders. Now, six years later (after serving a sentence for involuntary manslaughter), William Kreeger is out of prison and out for revenge. Kreeger was a popular psychiatrist who was a darker version of Dr. Phil. Preaching a philosophy of selfishness (that even includes a very loose definition of justifiable homicide), he had parlayed his fame into big bucks and even after his prison time, he is able to have a radio show, which he uses to verbally attack Steve. Steve knows that Kreeger wants revenge, but even he can't guess at how sinister Kreeger's scheme will be, nor the depths of evil that Kreeger is capable of. Meanwhile, Steve's lover and law partner Victoria is forced to question both Steve's ethics and his commitment to their relationship. Steve can be a great guy, but he's also a big-time flake, and their personalities definitely are opposites. Uptight Victoria needs to loosen up and ultra-casual Steve needs to be a little more dependable. As Steve watches his life unravel through Kreeger's manipulations, even Victoria begins to question Steve's approach to things. One of the strengths of these books is that Levine realizes that - although these are books about a couple - he doesn't need to balance things equally between the two. Steve Solomon is the more interesting character (in some ways, an updated version of Levine's previous series character Jake Lassiter), so Levine writes more about him than Victoria. Although I felt that Levine fell off his stride a bit in his previous book (the good but not great Deep Blue Alibi), he is back to his full excellence here with a novel that is both suspenseful and quite funny and a good recommendation for fans of crime fiction.

Better than Good:
As usual, I wasn't disappointed by Paul Levine. I can't wait for his next Solomon v. Lord book to be published, so I stared reading his earlier Jake Lassiter novels. Very entertaining!

Victoria Vacillates...Again:
The mismatched pair of Solomon and Lord is back for their third installment, this time dealing with a murderous ex-client of Steve's. Years ago when Steve was representing Dr. Bill Kreeger on a murder charge, he found evidence of just how cold and sociopathic the doctor was, and did something a little unethical to get him put away. Now Dr. Kreeger is a radio shrink, and keeps lambasting Steve on the air, when he isn't going out of the way to be Steve's best buddy. Steve's partner in law and life, Victoria Lord, is disgusted with Steve's lack of ethics and starts to worry she may be doing the wrong thing moving in with him. Plus, Steve's nephew Bobby is hitting puberty, and along with his interest in girls, Bobby also wants to rekindle a relationship with his drug-addled, abusive mother. While Steve does mental battle with Dr. Kreeger, he keeps getting arrested for assault--on the radio. Will he be able to hold it all together and put Dr. Kreeger back behind bars, or will he wind up there himself? While it has its share of chuckles and great, quotable lines (I love Solomon's Laws), the main story about Steve's struggle with Dr. Kreeger takes a backseat to matters between Steve and Victoria. That wouldn't necessarily be a bad thing, except it's just a rehash of exactly what went on between Victoria and Steve in their last book, The Deep Blue Alibi. Victoria vacillating over whether being with Steve is the right thing or not wasn't all that entertaining the first time around, and this time it really made the book drag. Steve's fears over losing Bobby are getting a little stale, too. It was hard to enjoy the author's wit while hoping the story would move along already. Steve is not the typical male lead, behaving irresponsibly and sometimes childishly, but that's his charm. Somehow, this guy who does everything the wrong way manages to get it right. In this book, however, Steve seems to be at a loss as to what's going on around him, and it just doesn't fit with his character. When things work themselves out in the end, it's more dumb luck than any planning on Steve's part. This is a series definitely worth reading...so far. However, the author really needs to move things along between Steve and Victoria. Surely there must be some way to make the differences in the way they operate into a good plot, without having them wonder if they belong together...again. There is a good cast of eclectic characters here, between Steve and Victoria, Steve's dad, Victoria's mother, and Bobby, not to mention the colorful side characters. It's a shame they keep rehashing the same story, but I'll read at least one more Solomon vs. Lord novel before I give up.

Not quite as good as its predecessors:
Steve Solomon is beset on a number of fronts in Kill All the Lawyers, the third installment in Paul Levine's series of legal whodunits. The most worrying of his concerns is that a certain Dr. William Kreeger--former client, celebrity psychiatrist, and sociopath--is out of prison and out to punish Steve for having lost his case. Meanwhile, Steve's father, disgraced judge Herbert T. Solomon, has gone Orthodox. Steve's sister Janice has found Jesus in rehab. And Steve's nephew Bobby has found the "harlot-in-training" down the street. To top it off, Victoria Lord, Steve's law partner and lover, is having doubts about their relationship. She spends most of this book agonizing over her decision to move in with him. Steve has found a worthy nemesis in his Dr. Phil-ish celebridoc, whose motives remain a mystery for the better part of the book. Ultimately Kreeger's story merges nicely with those of Bobby and Bobby's mother--who has shown up in Miami with her own brand of menace, the threat of removing Bobby from Steve's care. But it's unfortunate that Victoria takes a back seat in this one. Her relationship with Steve is less interesting here than in previous outings. Too little is made of Herbert Solomon, too, who shows up now and again to spout some Yiddishism and then exits the story. On a brighter note, there is some nice development in the relationship between Steve and Victoria's mother Irene, a woman at once magisterial and tawdry--and with a penchant for naked display. We watched Irene cavort naked poolside in Deep Blue Alibi. This time around, alas, we are made to look on as she splays her legs for an intimate waxing. The scene falls short of funny and into the realm of the shudder-inducing. Kill All the Lawyers seems a little stale in comparison with the first two books in the series, the characters often more cartoonish than not. I'm hoping the next outing finds them a bit more nuanced than they were allowed to be here.

Hilarious but also a bit predictable in spots:
I have enjoyed the previous two books in this series, and I enjoyed this one as well, but I did find that at times I could almost predict the dialogue and action in this one. This is book three in the Solomon and Lord series, and it picks up with Steve and Vickie engaged but struggling to find common ground when it comes to making choices about their future as a couple. That's not surprising, considering how different their respective characters are, but it's not as hilarious a conflict as I'd have expected it to be. Steve is Steve. He wears t-shirts that make you laugh sometimes and want to kick him in the toches others. He's still the kind of guy who acts like the law is a bit more flexible than Vickie thinks it is, and he's still the loving parent to his nephew, who creates really wicked anagrams in a nanosecond or two. Vickie is still stuck in the pattern of expecting Steve to be someone he's not, and Steve is still stuck in the pattern of expecting to be accepted precisely as he is without having to make changes to accomodate a romantic partnership. That stuff is very predictable, as is some of the mystery itself. What's good about this particular book in the series is the way that Steve's sister gets brought in, her act fairly cleaned up, and Steve's dad becomes the source of much humor as he becomes ultra-Jewish, much to Steve's consternation. The mystery is okay--one of Steve's ex-clients is after him because Steve basically broke all sorts of attorney-client rules in order to get him found guilty a few years back. In the course of dealing with his now-free ex-client, Steve must solve a mystery involving pedophilia, and this part of the book is fairly decently done. The ending is a bit pat for my taste, but it was funny enough. Overall, this is an enjoyable read.