JUDGMENT

Massachusetts Superior Court Judge Juliana Brody, a married mother of two, gets into big trouble when a video of a one-night stand she had in Chicago is used in an attempt to blackmail her into ruling in favor of a company being sued for sex discrimination.

The company, Wheelz, is a new, fast-growing competitor to Uber and Lyft. The plaintiff is a young female attorney who, fired after spurning the CEO's advances, is determined to expose Wheelz's oppressive frat-house antics. The case has drawn national attention in the #MeToo era. But as the highly regarded Brody discovers in desperately trying to save her job and marriage and protect her family—her bowels do things like "clench" quite a bit—there are dark forces invested in Wheelz: Russians. She can only hope the CIA has an answer. As with most of his bestsellers (The Switch, 2017, etc.), Finder works overtime to draw sympathy to a protagonist who creates her own problems with the dumb things she does and the obvious dangers she walks into. Adding to Brody's woes (and the novel's length) are the travails of her pot-smoking teenage son, whose state of mind does not improve after his father orders his guilty mother to move out.

Coming from an author known for his intense plots, Finder's latest is a rather mild work of suspense—readable but not all that suspenseful or compelling.