Instruct: Classify a given Amazon review as either positive or negative.
Query: Don't Waste Your Time on This Sequel

This is the second Marty Nickerson legal mystery and it's no better than the first. There's just no spark here, not much that's original or interesting. The prose is dull, and the characters are unimaginatively drawn. For example, the African American judge, and D.A. J.Stanley Edgerton's relationship with the judge, are very similar to what we saw in Grisham's "The Client," especially the Susan Sarandon movie version; and of course Grisham does it way better. The plot (father kills his young son's murderer) is transparently similar to an actual case where a father killed his daughter's rapist, a case that has been on TV shows like American Justice many times. The subplots, too, were trite and did not compel me to keep reading. I received this and the previous Nickerson novel as gifts: out of politeness I slogged through the first book but couldn't finish this one.