When Justice Sleeps by Stacey Abrams
I was surprised to see a fiction book by Stacey Abrams, who was a legislator in Georgia for 11 years (iirc) and ran for Governor of Georgia. Just didn't expect fiction from a politician.
I liked the book, and while it's not one of my favorites, I do recommend it. The story is interesting, it is compelling, and the character development is good - in that you come to know and care about the characters.
Its not the best written book I've ever read. She uses too much fancy language to describe relatively mundane things. Some of the dialogue is so-so, but most of it is pretty solid. There's some technical points I get annoyed about, but it doesn't really affect the overarching story.
The main appeal of this book is the Big Plot, which I'll mostly avoid spoiling.
Avery is a legal clerk for Supreme Court Justice Howard Wynn. Wynn falls into a coma and appoints Avery as his legal guardian. His (soon-to-be-ex) wife fights her for power of attorney, but Avery resists. Wynn has gotten Avery mired in some conspiracy (unless it's just him being a crazy old man), and the Big Plot is that conspiracy.
The conspiracy in and of itself is quite interesting. It is fairly unique, and it is uncovered throughout the book. We learn as our main character Avery learns, and I like this approach.
Now for my gripes.
First of all - Howard Wynn is a caricature of a man, at least in the early pages. He doesn't feel like a real person, and this is a little offputting. Most of her character writing is better than it seems from her introduction to Wynn.
Since we're dealing with a high level conspiracy involving a Supreme Court Justice, it makes sense that we would have politics and Left & Right stuff brought into the book. BUT, the way its incorporated feels lazy and oversimplified and performative. It only occupies a handful of paragraphs throughout the book, and it's just ... a little cringey, I guess?
There are several scenes dealing with technology that really irritate me, and I just have to kind of look past them. One (this isn't much of a spoiler for the plot, but will reveal a scene) ... One case is a surveillance situation - there is both audio and video surveillance. So one of our characters uses a frequency jammer to knock out the audio surveillance equipment. The way its described, it sounds like the surveillance equipment works wireless and the jammer will block the radio signals, NOT do noise-cancellation on the audio. Well, for some reason, they say that the video isn't blocked but the audio is. Which means the video is wired? The whole thing is just poor from a technical perspective. Either what's actually happening makes perfect sense and is badly described, or, more likely, Abrams is not a very technical person and did not have a good technical consultant and so some of these techy scenes are just poorly done.
She writes "email in-box". It's "email inbox". What a weirdo for hyphenating it. Definitely not a big deal, but I just didn't care for it lol.
Oh the fucking Chess bullshit. It's fiiiine. But Wynn and Avery are both Chess aficionados (I assume Abrams is too), and there's chess analogies throughout the entire book. In some ways, it's very fitting, useful for the plot, and actually makes sense. But a lot of the time, it just feels forced and awkward.
Oh back to when the audio and (not) video were jammed. They say they have about 5 minutes before the people surveilling them become suspicious about the signal being jammed. NO. No fucking way bro. 5 minute blackouts on all of your surveillance equipment are not normal, and no way they wouldn't be suss as hell after more than like 10 seconds. Also in another scene they jam the video too! Also, it seems our character doing the jamming has the tech built INTO his laptop to do the jamming. I find it unlikely, but okay, that's fine, it's surely very possible.
Oh, this might be a bit of a spoiler here - but one of the issues in the book is that Wynn is in a coma and the only way for him to be removed from the Bench is for him (or his legal guardian) to resign him from the Supreme Court or for him to die. Apparently there's no legal precedent for what to do when a Justice with a lifetime appointment is kept alive but incapacitated for an extended period of time. This is probably true. But in real life, Supreme Court Justices can be impeached. It should have been discussed in the book. It could have readily been dismissed because of political deadlock in Congress or whatever (a very believable scenario). It should have been discussed though.
I'm pretty much always extremely critical of books I read (unless they're written by N.K. Jemisin the GOAT) . Yet I still often really enjoy them. This is one of those books. There are definitely issues in it, as I described. But there are strong points to it too - the plot is well written and interesting. The characters are well-developed and easy to care about. The writing style ... which isn't my favorite ... wasn't hard to warm up to. Overall, I'd say it's a good book, and if you like conspiracy shit it's definitely a recommend.