THE ALTERNATE

You’ve met the prosecutor from hell, the D.A. from hell, the judge, the client, the witness from hell. Now Martel (Conflicts of Interest, 1995, etc.) presents the juror from hell. Ex-Congressman Elliot Ashford, who looks and talks like Jay Gatsby, is accused of killing his wife. It’s the sort of case that could vault San Francisco D.A. Earl Field into the governor’s mansion, but Field has dirty reasons of his own for tanking the case. Asking Grace Harris, the head of his homicide trials unit, to serve as his co-counsel, he resolves to torpedo his own case while making sure she gets the blame. Grace’s opposite number, Barrett Dickson, is getting set up equally dextrously. A veteran litigator who’s been in seclusion ever since losing a foolproof case, he agrees to second-chair Elliot’s hotshot L.A. attorney Al Menghetti, then watches while Menghetti goes into a tailspin and walks, leaving him holding the bag for a client he dislikes and distrusts on behalf of a firm that’s trying to ease him out. The wild card neither Grace nor Barrett reckons with is Amanda Keller, the file clerk who’s convinced that getting called for Elliot’s jury will restart her acting career. Snaking her way from the pool of alternates to a coveted seat on the jury, she hatches a series of increasingly deranged plots to see her brand of justice done. Martel neglects all the traditional strengths of legal intrigue—the courtroom scenes are muffled, the complications exhausting, the characters as simplified as caricatures—in order to keep unearthing new varieties of skullduggery the way some writers unearth new evidence. Long before Grace warns the Grace-smitten Barrett, Don’t deny your client a shot at a fair trial!, most readers will be wondering what on earth a fair trial might be. Martel would’ve written a masterpiece if only the fascinating questions he raises about the corruption bred by the adversarial system of criminal justice made for equally fascinating melodrama. (Literary Guild/Mystery Guild selection; author tour)