He came to it by chance, after a job at Games magazine didn't pan out. "I had no idea what to do," he says. "So I did what all of us ould do in that situation. I said, 'I'm gonna write a novel.'" After one false start, a book called Fraternity that twenty-four publishers rejected, Brad Meltzer hit his stride. In 1997, The Tenth Justice, which earned him extra credit from Columbia Law School (where he was a student), was picked up by Morrow and hit The New York Times bestseller list. He's been writing legal thrillers ever since.
Critics like Meltzer's fast pace and nifty plots (Kirkus called The Tenth Justice "a mean, paranoid fantasy that'll have you turning pages in a frenzy," and USA Today said it "reads fast, rings true, and refreshingly breaks the mold of legal thrillers"), but it's the legal details that distinguish them from most legal fiction. Meltzer says his key is "Research, research, research," a task that can consume two to six months of his year-long writing schedule.

The Tenth Justice involves the ethical -- and unethical -- shenanigans of a Yale Law graduate clerking for a Supreme Court justice. Early in the novel, the young clerk leaks confidential information about a case under consideration; he spends the rest of the novel racing to repair the damage. Vanity Fair called the result "completely absorbing"; People said the book earned Meltzer the right to "belly up to the bar in the company of John Grisham, Scott Turow, and David Baldacci."

With Dead Even (1998), Meltzer designed a plot with the trappings of screwball comedy -- husband and wife lawyers find themselves on opposite sides of a criminal case. But the story has an edgier twist: both lawyers have been told that their spouse will die unless they win the case. Again, a swift pace and legal authenticity rule the day. As a critic for the San Francisco Chronicle wrote, with Dead Even "Meltzer beautifully ratchets up the tension."

In The First Counsel (2001), Meltzer relies on an insider view of White House security to keep the story moving: A young White House lawyer falls in love with the President's daughter, code name "Shadow," and becomes entangled in an agenda of betrayal and murder. With The Millionaires (2002), Meltzer turns his attention to the world of private banking and the exploits of two brothers who can't resist the temptation to skim a few million out of an abandoned account. Both are fast-paced reads and packed with insights into the sometimes sinister world of finance and law.