Book #8 – The First Counsel

I have enjoyed a few of Meltzer’s books over the years. They’re a mystery/thriller, that often catch my eye with a story that will twist somehow. The First Counsel is no different, starting with a young lawyer working in the White House legal office, out on the town with the First Daughter. After they lose the Secret Service agents, they observe the White House lawyer, and the young man’s boss, leave an envelope in a forest. When they find it’s got $40,000 in it, their world changes.

The book is almost like a No Way Out scenario, where the senior lawyer knows they say him, and subtly threatens his employee. When another lawyer is found dead in the Old Executive Building, and our young lawyer is suspected, it seems like the walls are closing in.

It’s a wild ride, with the First Daughter alternately avoiding and helping him, his colleagues making him second guess their loyalties, and even times when I second guessed if the hero hadn’t done something the author didn’t let us see. A good page turner I enjoyed on a trip, though it’s definitely not a great ending. I think Meltzer struggles with endings, but that didn’t detract from a good read.