With While Justice Sleeps, Stacey Abrams (Lead from the Outside) marks her first foray into the political thriller genre--bringing her experience with courts, politics and the justice system to a world of imagined suspense and intrigue, with great success.
Supreme Court Justice Howard Wynn has few family ties. He has dedicated his life, instead, to his role on the Supreme Court, and to his definition of justice. "He felt equally dismissive of willful ignorance--his description of the modern press--and smug stupidity, his bon mot for politicians." Avery Keene serves as Justice Wynn's law clerk, overworked and underpaid while juggling care for her mother, who suffers from drug addiction and pops in and out of Avery's life.
When Justice Wynn slips into an inexplicable coma, his papers shockingly name Avery his legal guardian. And as people around Justice Wynn start to disappear or turn up dead, Avery quickly realizes she's in deeper than she thought possible. She is drawn into an international plot surrounding the possible merger of an American tech company and Indian genetics research lab in a Supreme Court case, for which Justice Wynn was likely to be the swing vote.
There are a lot of layers to the central mystery of While Justice Sleeps, which can feel labyrinthine at times. But a bit of patience is more than worth it, as Abrams weaves a suspenseful tale of politics and power that feels grounded in the realities of American politics--even while the case and story surrounding it are purely fiction. --Kerry McHugh, blogger at Entomology of a Bookworm