Protect and Defend

Patterson, Richard North

ISBN 10: 0375416765 ISBN 13: 9780375416767

Publisher: Random House Audible, 2000

Synopsis

When the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court drops dead immediately following the inauguration, President Kerry Kilcannon finds the first order of business is to find a replacement, settling on Judge Caroline Masters, a woman who hides the career-damaging secret of an illegitimate child, a secret that could affect her ruling on a controversial case.

About this title

Review:

Richard North Patterson's excellent Protect and Defend is both courtroom drama and political nail-biter; if politics is the art of the possible, just how far is it legitimate to go in a cause which you think of as good? A 15-year-old, pregnant with a seriously disabled child delivering which alive will prevent her having further children; parents so adamantly opposed to abortion that they will refuse consent to what she wants--this is the minefield into which idealistic lawyer Sarah walks knowing that she has found the hard case to discredit a bad law. Her former mentor Caroline is up for promotion to Chief Justice--and Sarah's test case becomes the litmus paper by which an entire political culture brings itself to judgement... Patterson forces us to consider the entire question of the private, the personal and the political--no one from Democrat President to Republican candidate has entirely clean hands, but just how intrusive is the process of scrutiny allowed to be? Patterson writes as an insider--his acknowledgements list includes two US Presidents--but his sense of the law and of the political process is balanced by compassion for those conscripted into the public eye by circumstances not ambition. --Roz Kaveney

Review:

""PROTECT AND DEFEND IS A WINNER. . . . ENGROSSING FROM THE FIRST PAGE . . . Patterson crank[s] up a wild ride on a roller coaster of morality, politics, and emotions."
--"USA Today
"POWERFUL . . . RIVETING FROM BEGINNING TO END . . . With "Protect and Defend, Richard North Patterson lays further claim to being one of America's best contemporary popular novelists."
--"The Detroit News
"BRILLIANT . . . PATTERSON HAS CAUGHT LIGHTNING IN A BOTTLE. . . . PUT THIS ONE AT THE TOP OF YOUR HOT LIST."
--STEPHEN KING
""PROTECT AND DEFEND" IS A WINNER. . . . ENGROSSING FROM THE FIRST PAGE . . . Patterson crank[s] up a wild ride on a roller coaster of morality, politics, and emotions."
--"USA Today"
"POWERFUL . . . RIVETING FROM BEGINNING TO END . . . With "Protect and Defend," Richard North Patterson lays further claim to being one of America s best contemporary popular novelists."
--"The Detroit News
"
"BRILLIANT . . . PATTERSON HAS CAUGHT LIGHTNING IN A BOTTLE. . . . PUT THIS ONE AT THE TOP OF YOUR HOT LIST."
--STEPHEN KING
"

"PROTECT AND DEFEND IS A WINNER. . . . ENGROSSING FROM THE FIRST PAGE . . . Patterson crank[s] up a wild ride on a roller coaster of morality, politics, and emotions."
--USA Today
"POWERFUL . . . RIVETING FROM BEGINNING TO END . . . With Protect and Defend, Richard North Patterson lays further claim to being one of America's best contemporary popular novelists."
--The Detroit News

"BRILLIANT . . . PATTERSON HAS CAUGHT LIGHTNING IN A BOTTLE. . . . PUT THIS ONE AT THE TOP OF YOUR HOT LIST."
--STEPHEN KING

About this edition

• Publisher: Random House Audible
• Publication date: 2000
• ISBN 10: 0375416765
• ISBN 13: 9780375416767
• Binding: Audio Cassette