The Alternate is a novel written by John Martel, an attorney in the San Francisco firm of Farella, Braun & Martel. He has been hailed by the National Law Journal as one of the top ten trial lawyers in America. He is clearly a well-respected and talented trial lawyer, and this is reflected in the way he writes this story. With his background knowledge coming from experiences as a consultant to the Los Angeles District Attorney’s offices in the prosecution of O.J. Simpson and the retrial of Erik and Lyle Menendez, the glimpses of reality he gives throughout the story are captivating to the reader. I enjoyed that the story focuses more on the trial side of the story than the process of solving the mystery. The way the story begins with a murder …show more content…
I had to finish the book to finally get the answer that was asked at the very beginning: who killed Lara Ashford? However, by focusing more on the trial side of the crime, it made the novel a lot more difficult for me to get through. Although I enjoyed it immensely and there was never a dull moment, my personal lack of knowledge and understanding about the law and cases like this in general made some of the content difficult or slow to get through. I am not familiar with how trials like this are run, as all I really have to draw from are scenes I’ve seen in movies and on TV, which are not usually very accurate. As a result, scenes throughout the book that described the rules, used the terminology, and explained the processes of the trial took me a while to read and fully understand. Even now, I’m not sure I understand it enough to explain exactly what happened properly, although I have a general idea. I was impressed with how Martel balanced the drama of a typical movie or TV show with the accuracy and detail of someone with experience as a trial lawyer. It didn’t feel over the top or too dramatic, but it wasn’t slow moving and dull