Supreme Justice

Predictable but enjoyable

This book tells the story of a liberal former Secret Service agent (Reeder) drawn into the investigation of the murder of a supreme court justice. The story is set in the near future, about 10-15 years from now in an America that is ultra conservative and has greatly expanded police powers and repealed the landmark Roe v. Wade decision. Reeder, our hero, is a gifted people reader that sees important clues in the behavior of the perpetrators that no one else's picks up on. This lands him on the task force working the murders and puts him in the crosshairs of the killers.
I liked the story over all but did find it a bit too predictable. I felt like I saw were the story was going as easily as Reedes should have been able to. The ring leader is easily pegged pretty early on tho he isn't revealed for certain until the last few chapters. The story also felt a little choppy at times. On the positive side, the story was fast paced and drew me in quickly and I really liked Reeder and his task force partner Patti Rogers. The characters were easy to relate to. Overall, I found this book to be a fun, easy read.

There's never been a single successful Supreme Court assassination. I wonder why. Not that I think there should be, of course, but the executive and legislative branch don't seem to have any immunity. Even the lower levels of the court system see judges murdered. But not the nine. Not so far. Until a near future time in Max Allan Collins' Supreme Justice, anyways. Then suddenly there is not just one justice killed, but two. Two conservative justices, during the term of a Democratic president.

Joseph Reeder, a retired Secret Service agent, has earned the scorn of the law enforcement community for two reasons: his devotion to techniques of body and facial language reading to investigate crimes (earning him the nickname “Peep”, which is never really satisfactorily explained) and the fact that when he took a bullet in an assassination attempt against a very conservative president, he was vocal about his regret for doing so, since Reeder is himself a liberal and believes that the country would have been better off without the continued leadership of that president. But when Gabe Sloan, one of Reeder's closest friends and godfather to his daughter, is named head of the task force investigating the assassinations, Reeder is drawn back into the fold to help. He's paired with Patti Rogers of the FBI, Sloan's usual partner, and the two try to figure each other out as they also try to solve the crime.

Perhaps I'd have been less harsh on this had I not just read an unspectacular thriller two books ago. While I enjoyed The Barkeep more than I thought I would, it also represented a break from a long stretch of literary fiction and high-intensity non-fiction that made it a nice diversion and a chance to get outside my usual box a little. Supreme Justice, coming so close in time, was more irritating than anything else. The characters are pure tropes, plot developments are telegraphed miles away (when Reeder's daughter is introduced early, it's eye-rollingly obvious that she is going to be put into peril at some later point in the book), and Collins is heavy-handed enough with his political statements that even though I share most of the expressed philosophy, I was over it pretty quickly. The writing isn't especially elegant or expressive. There's just not much here in the way of reasons to recommend it, so I'll recommend that you seek your thrillers elsewhere.