The crime part of this story was great. The action was fast paced and suspenseful. I didn't see the twist at the end of the who and the why. On the other hand it was let down by the inclusion of the romance.

Because the romance was freaking ridiculous.

I like a strong feisty heroine. But that wasn't Samantha. Samantha was kind of stupid for a lawyer. For all her ambition she has no concept of politics. Particularly office politics. She was standoffish and judgemental to her coworkers. And some of it was justified (because the men were jerks) but I got the impression that she was always like that no matter what they said. Plus she never really tells them off, just gets shirty and is all, that's not funny. She's focused and narrow minded and honestly not all that likeable.

In terms of the romance she's a freaking psycho. Samantha and the love interest, Chuck (one of the police detectives) are high school sweethearts. They did the whole long distance thing for college but Samantha resents him for being the reason she didn't get to experience things others did. Not sure why she couldn't go out without him but whatever. She apparently decided law school would be different and made him apply to graduate schools with her. Except he decides he doesn't want to go to graduate school so she makes him choose. He tries to tell her he doesn't want to go to more school, he wants to be a cop. She laughs and tells him he'll never amount to anything and he walks out. So okay, not that bad.

But they reconnect on and off and this is a guy she's known her whole life and the second there's a rumour of wrongdoing on his part she throws him under the bus. What the hell? There's no loyalty in her. I didn't remotely understand why he wanted to be with her. Ever. Especially because he's apparently good looking, smart, well off, kind and reasonable. He could do better.

So considering Samantha was fairly unlikable 90% of the time, I'm kind of surprised I liked this as much as I did. But the other characters, the motives and the crimes themselves made up for it. I found myself flying through pages trying to figure out how it would end, how they would get justice. So, I'll likely pick up the next one. But for this one 4 stars. ( )

Long and drawn out. 13 yr. old girl abducted and seriously damaged by several assailants. Not to my liking. ( )

Judgement Calls is a fairly typical 'whodunnit' but was my first Alafair Burke book. I have rated it as a four star book - three stars for the book and author plus an extra star for Betty Bobitt's reading of my audio version. I will be reading more of Burke's novels. ( )

Good story, cop procedural. Author is the daughter of James Lee Burke. Samantha Kincaid is an asst DA in Portland, prosecuting horrible crimes of violence against teen prostitutes. Not so great narration. Sounds like the narrator fights (not completely successfully) to hide a British accent, for low life Portlandians... ( )

Samantha Kinkaid is a prosecutor in Portland, and she is Alafair Burke's central character. Burke gives us good but not great characterizations, and a storyline that pulled me in. ( )