Newly appointed federal judge, Cate Fante's first case on the bench involves a poor screenwriter suing a famous Hollywood producer for stealing his idea and making a fortune on cable TV without giving him a share. Cate eventually must rule against the poor screenwriter, a former lawyer who literally gave up his ‘day job' to write the script based on an ‘oral' agreement with the producer. After losing his case the poor screenwriter promptly attacks the producer before the gavel hits the judge's desk.

Later that night, Cate has a date with her boyfriend Graham. He puts a gold bracelet from Tiffany's on her wrist to express his growing feelings, but Cate isn't ready for a commitment. She has a dirty secret. Running away from Graham, Cate goes to a seedy bar, picks up a stranger, and they go to a cheap motel to have sex. Her dirty secret she admittedly realizes is a bad habit, but one she's been hiding and pursuing at least once a month for over a year and a half. Once she and the Elvis look-a-like she'd picked up tonight start to get busy against the motel door, an attack of conscience at seeing the gold bracelet from Graham sends Cate out of the motel and out of the angry arms of the stranger she's picked up. He tries to rape her but she escapes even as he runs after her in a fitful rage at being abandoned.

The next morning, Cate's problems are compounded when the producer from her case is killed and a security tape of the murderer, who looks very much like the poor screenwriter, is found. In another shocking piece of news, the Elvis-look-a-like is also found dead having fallen off the balcony of the cheap motel when she ran out fearful of being raped.

This book started out intriguingly with the screenwriter and the producer's court case, but quickly dissolved into a juvenile and unbelievable farce. Cate's secret sex life becomes public threatening her job and sending her boyfriend packing. The point we're bludgeoned with repeatedly throughout the book is that a ‘man' in her lofty position wouldn't be treated the same over a sex scandal. I disagree. A federal court judge should know better. Cate, herself as a former trial lawyer before her promotion to the bench, should know her repeated bad behavior was bound to come out. The tantrums she throws continually through the book for various reasons make my eyes roll at every word this character utters.

There is never any plausible explanation given as to why she ever participated in this foolish and dangerous life style in the first place. The black moment scene revealing the far-fetched and completely out of nowhere bad-guy moment was ludicrous in its lack of foreshadowing and idiotic motivation revealed. The single most implausible shocker of a plot thread inserted in the eleventh hour of the final chapter made me very unhappy with this book.

2 Kisses

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