Quite surprised to find that my database says that I've read one of this series before as I didn't remember the central character at all. Pretty good legal stuff but it's taken me so long to pick this one up and read it that I think that I'd best not say I'd fancy reading more by this author. ( )

Quite surprised to find that my database says that I've read one of this series before as I didn't remember the central character at all. Pretty good legal stuff but it's taken me so long to pick this one up and read it that I think that I'd best not say I'd fancy reading more by this author. ( )

When Cass Jameson was a child there was a roller coaster called the Blue Streak. When she grew older it was replaced with a new improved, out of control roller coaster called the Mean Streak. As a Legal Aid lawyer the equivalent of the Blue Streak had been the Brooklyn state court system where Cass knew all the curves and drop offs by heart. And as an adult, the equivalent of the Mean Streak was the Southern District Federal Court system, just across the river in Manhattan where Cass was going to be trying her first case as the lawyer for her former lover who is also the lawyer for the mob. And while the story has unscrupulous prosecutors, cops on the take, witnesses that turn up dead, three murders and a suicide, the story itself is not a roller coaster. In fact, at times it is rather slow and lacks tension.

The up side is that there is plenty of time for character development of the main character, Cass. She is a character that changes and grows during the story in a way that is believable - though sometimes the story is not. The ending that the reader has already figured out takes Cass a while to get to. The story turns out not to be so much of a roller coaster ride but rather a bicylce ride, pleasant but not really the Mean Streak. ( )