Since 1939
Cordially invites you to celebrate
with us our 59th year of business
serving the metropolitan (Detroit area.
Legal Eagle
U-M grad Brad Meltzer loves the law,
but writing is his passion.
Dnhonor of this event,
on 3ulg 16 17 1.8 19 &z July 24 25, 26
( Mife
will roll back our prices
to 1977
7618 (433odward L./give., (Detroit
(31,3) 871 1590
1-Reservations are suggested
(offer good only at our Tetrait location)
Enjoy gracious dining amid a beautiful
atmosphere of casual elegance
BREAKFAST LUNCH DINNER
OPEN 7 DAYS:
MON.- SAT. 7
a.m.- 9:30 p.m. SUN. 8 a.m.- 9 p.m.
6638 Telegraph Road and Maple • Bloomfield Plaza • 248-851-0313
in Cantonese, &Awn
Jlandctrin joods
• excellent (Vitae jish and Steaks
W
Orchard Lake Rd. • 932-3133
Xunch 'Buffet • Tanquea oom available
LhloWday-`Thursday (11:30 a.m. to 2:00 p.m.)
6/5
1998
100
Batch the best
Music Reviews in
JN Entertainment
SUZANNE CHESSLER
Special To The Jewish News
7,
here's no mystery about
whether Brad Meltzer will
include Ann Arbor refer-
ences in his crime novels.
The University of Michigan (U-M)
graduate thinks of those links as a way
to "tip that hat and say thank you."
In his second book, Dead Even,
which he signs June 9 at Borders in
Birmingham, Meltzer dresses a charac-
ter in a U-M T-shirt and names a law
firm after his former roommate, Judd
Winick.
"The University of Michigan was
the only place I wanted to go [after
high school], and I sent out only one
college application," said Meltzer, 28,
who has joined the growing list of
attorneys turning down real cases in
favor of devising their own for fiction's
legal thriller market.
"I went to another law school
because I wanted to see other universi-
ties and because my wife — we had
just become engaged — was going to
Columbia."
With the Meltzers' shared career as
the starting concept for the book, Dead
Even pits fictional husband and wife
lawyers Oared Lynch and Sara Tate)
against each other in court as they take
opposing sides of the same case.
Once at work, Jared and Sara
receive vicious threats that soon put
their relationship in danger. Each is
told, in secret, to win the case or the
other will die.
Keeping these threats hidden, try-
ing to avert disaster and uncovering
the reasons behind the intimidation
build the plot, which also has
Meltzer's Judaism as part of its foun-
dation.
"Dead Even is a great deal about
faith — faith in marriage, faith in the
ones you love and faith in yourself,"
said the author, whose first novel, The
Tenth Justice, climbed the best seller
lists.
"I really can only draw on my reli-
gion for that. Religion plays a major
role for me in flushing out what faith
is and how people interact with faith."
Meltzer describes his second book
as more personal than the first. Unlike
The Tenth Justice, which focused on a
friendship, this focuses on a relation-
ship.
"Every day, when I sat down to
write, I would ask myself how far I
would go to save my wife and how far
she would go to save me," Meltzer
said. "The love that Sara has for Jared
and Jared has for Sara — both of
them — is the love I have for her."
Meltzer, married to his high-school
sweetheart, Cori Flam, grew up in
Brooklyn and moved with his family
to Miami.
While in high school, he served as
student government president and was
featured in Parade magazine after he
started a school protest by wearing a
skirt. The air conditioning had broken
down, and the dress code said boys
couldn't wear shorts.
After receiving his undergraduate
degree from U-M in 1992, with a
major in history and a minor in
English, Meltzer was recruited into
marketing by Games magazine pub-
lisher Eli Segal.
Segal soon left the magazine to
become Bill Clinton's chief of staff for
the 1992 presidential campaign, and
later, in the summer of 1994, Segal
again recruited Meltzer, this time as a
speech writer for AmeriCorps,
Clinton's national service program.
Already studying law at Columbia
University, Meltzer co-wrote the
AmeriCorps oath of service, which
was delivered by President Clinton to
new members.
"It was just a thrill hearing some-
thing I had worked on [spoken] by
the president," said Meltzer, who now
makes his home in Washington, D.C.
During that summer, Meltzer
developed the idea for The Tenth
Justice. He interviewed former clerks
at the Supreme Court and was
encouraged to hear that his story line
was plausible.
Meltzer finished his debut novel
while at Columbia, where he con-
vinced one of his professors to give
him academic credit for the mystery.
He also taught law to eighth-graders