Review: Silent Counsel ****

 I just spent the last hour speeding through the last fourth of this book, desperate to find the resolution, which was clever beyond my imagining. Since I don’t do spoilers, I won’t reveal it.

Normally I am fairly leisurely in reading novels; I intersperse them with magazines and games on my phone. For the last week, my first priority every day was to read a few pages of Silent Counsel. To say I couldn’t put it down is no exaggeration.

Once again, Isaacson explains complex issues in an intelligible way, intersperse with inspired (and sometimes scary) plot elements. If you don’t know what attorney-client privilege is, this book will show you. I suspect Isaacson was merely applying his decades of experience as a lawyer.

And this time, he explains a complex technical issue, IP addresses, in a few short, clear paragraphs. Once again, probably not research but a residue of his MIT education.

Two small knocks cut this from five stars to four: I hate child in peril situations. I know a novel needs conflict, but please try to find some other source. Second, I don’t feel any reasonably well-informed adult who has watched any legal drama on TV hasn’t been exposed to attorney-client privilege, the lynchpin in this novel. The plot requires one of the main non-lawyer characters to demonstrate total unfamiliarity with the idea. Yes, she’s terribly upset, but still…