Justice was a business like any other.

1996, and t. he world seemed good to Casey Cort. Her last year in law school, she had a!ready secured a position in an high profile law company to start after her examinations, she was senior editor on the Law Review college publication, her name on the Masthead, and her wealthy boyfriend of over two years was, she was certain, about to propose, introducing her into his privileged family. It was all a perfect picture of happy ever afters...

This short prequel introduces Casey and a series by Aime Austin which is not known to this reader. Well written in the first person, it paints the main protagonist in a far from flattering way: perhaps to contrast the foolish, hard working and self opinionated, and money and boyfriend focused silly girl with the person she became in later books? Certainly her outpourings of future hopes and current make up made her a shallow and unlikably childish protagonist.

It also seemed a strange choice, and an initially confusing one, to have a male narrator becoming this female student. Although Dan McGowan read well, with clearly defined conversation from other protagonists and good cadence and intonation throughout, he was never able to convincingly become Casey, the contrast between her silly girlish prattle and his masculine voice being an imagination gap too large for this listener to leap.

I requested, and was freely gifted, a complimentary copy of The Common Pleas Lawyer, from the rights holder, via Audiobook Boom. My thanks for that. But I admit to having expected something with a little more legal content and, in this, was disappointed. It might well appeal to a reader familiar with the character from a book later in the series but, sadly, this was not for me.

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