Dirty Blonde by Lisa Scottoline

I love Scottoline's courtroom suspense since it usually focuses on women as the main character.
In this book the main character is Cate Fante, who was recently appointed federal judge. She has been assigned to preside over a celebrity case where Mr Simone (a reknown producer) is accused of stealing the idea to his most recent hit from local lawyer who had pitched the idea to him.

Although Cate would like to rule in favor of Mr. Marz (the local lawyer), since it's clear that the ideas and storylines to the show had been stolen, the law is clear and she has to rule against him. This sets off a chainof events that finds Simone murdered and Marz killed, supposedly by his own hand with the same pistol that had killed Simone. Seems like an open and shut case except, one detective believes Cate did the killing or better said, hired an assasin to do the dirty work.

It seems our lady judge has one big ghost in her closet. She likes to go to seedy bars and pick up men for one night stands. She doesn't do it on a regular basis but the fact that the men are from the lowest spectrum of society could lead to ruination. And almost does.

When the truth somes out, after Russo (the detective) leaks it to the press, her life turns inside out. She finds herself running from a madman intent on killing her, trying to save her job and in her spare time, she is looking for the real killer since she is fairly certain that Marz had nothing to do with the murder of the producer and he was setup to take the fall because of the lawsuit he loss.

Although the book set a decent pace it seemed as if all the characters had been brushed over. We never get attached to anyone, not even Cate. Even though Scottoline gives us a glimpse into Cate's past nothing really explains her behavior or makes us believe that she really wants to be a judge. I was a bit disappointed in this book because Scottoline is an author of higher caliber than the work put out in this book. In the last chapter of the book we discover what happened to Cate's last one-night stand and it seemed as if the author put it there as a last attempt to tie a loose end and decided to use a shock me mentality which failed completely.

If you are looking for a quick, entertaining read... pick this one up, but if you are expecting the usual quality of Lisa Scotoline's books, skip it.

Grade: C
Format: Audiobook