An Equal Justice
By Chad Zunker
Thomas & Mercer, 2019

Practiced thriller writer Chad Zunker starts a new series with his latest book, An Equal Justice, and he starts it on what will be extremely familiar ground for readers of legal thrillers: the ambitious young lawyer, the prestigious law firm, the skullduggery rather easily stumbled upon, the Wilfrid Brimley stand-in lurking in the shadows, the hastily-improvised master plan, etc. John Grisham set this pattern in unbreakable stone back in 1991, and innumerable legal thrillers published since then have stuck to it like high holy religious writ. 

An Equal Justice does likewise. Our hard-charging young protagonist is David Adams, a poor boy from West Texas who scrapped and scraped his way to Stanford and views his joining of the swanky Austin law firm Hunter & Kellerman as his chance to achieve the kind of life that he once thought would never be his. He watches the firm’s head of litigation, Marty Lyons, and makes a mental checklist of acquisitions:

David had counted four different Rolex watches on the man’s wrist at different points. He’d spotted Lyons behind the wheel of both a $100,000 Mercedes and a shiny black Porsche 911 Turbo. He’d heard Lyons owned a 1,000-acre ranch in south Texas and a 5,000-square-foot cabin in Vail.

Hunter & Kellerman’s work culture is crushing, especially for new hires seeking to impress their superiors (David has a rival in his overwork, a Boston snob named Tidmore who drops out of the story disappointingly early). “Most of the other associates and partners began peeling off around nine - that seemed to be the hour they all started letting each other off the hook,” we’re told. David thrives in such conditions through a combination of hustle and uppers, although his drug use is never treated realistically or utilized effectively, and it obediently disappears when the plot needs it to. Given the book’s heavy subplot involving homeless men whose lives have been wrecked by pills or drink, it feels extra ironic to point out that drug addictions don’t work that way. 

Very early on in his tenure at the firm, young David is given a dire warning by another lawyer, who urges him to get out while he can. That lawyer is then immediately found dead of an apparent suicide, and it takes David about one million years to begin suspecting anybody at Hunter & Kellerman. This little moment, for instance, happens at the full half-way point of the entire novel, by which time you’ll want to have David killed yourself, just for being a blockhead:

Later, Lyons had warned him in private that if David ever mentioned anything to his wife he’d fire David on the spot - or have him killed. The second comment caught him off guard. He thought Lyons was trying to be funny; however, it gave him pause. 

Fortunately, Zunker has a more elaborate plot to pursue, something involving an aspiring Presidential candidate, a ruthless hitman, and, intriguingly, “the Camp,” an enclave of homeless men hidden in the woods and quietly dedicated to spiritual and personal improvement. One of the “elders” of the Camp, an ex-Navy man named Benny Dugan, is one of the novel’s most memorable characters.

Also memorable, and also criminally under-utilized, is private investigator Frank Hodges, who keeps fit by running along the beach down in Florida, who has a Brazilian girlfriend named Maria, who does young David a good bit of service precisely when he needs it the most, and about whom we’re told: “Frank’s version of ‘Margaritaville’ was sitting in an unmarked van doing surveillance on a potential perp. Or chasing a mole through a dark alley and wrangling the truth out of him.” Considering what a boneheaded milksop David Adams so often is in the course of the book, more than a few readers might find themselves wishing Frank Hodges had been the star of the show. 

After all, to echo one critic’s slightly whinging question from back in 1991, who wants to read about lawyers anyway? 

—Steve Donoghue is a founding editor of Open Letters Monthly. His book criticism has appeared in The Boston Globe, The Wall Street Journal, The Historical Novel Society, and The American Conservative. He writes regularly for The National, The Washington Post, The Vineyard Gazette, and The Christian Science Monitor. His website is http://www.stevedonoghue.com.