Double Life: The Shattering Affair Between Chief Judge Sol Wachtler and Socialite Joy Silverman

Draws on hundreds of interviews to explore the downfall of the man once considered a potential Republican presidential candidate

Wolfe ( Wasted: The Preppie Murder ) here presents an involving, sympathetic if not fully reflective account of a case that became a tabloid drama. Former New York State Chief Judge Wachtler, arrested in November 1992 for harassing his former lover and step-cousin, Joy Silverman, cooperated with the author as did his wife, Joan. Silverman did not, so Wolfe's dual biographical sketches--of the lawyer rising in Nassau County Republican politics and a woman whose apparent avarice and manipulation served her well--relies on sources hardly friendly to Silverman. Wolfe draws on Wachtler and others to describe his sexless marriage, his headiness as the affair with Silverman bloomed in 1988 and how, depressed at their breakup, he posed as a private investigator and sent vulgar, threatening letters to Silverman, who enlisted the FBI. In March 1993, Wachtler pleaded guilty to one count of harassment and was sentenced to 15 months in prison. Wolfe suggests Wachtler's behavior can be blamed on hubris; she also accepts in part his argument that prescription drugs affected his actions. Photos not seen by PW. First serial to Vanity Fair; Literary Guild selection; author tour.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Both more and less than you wanted to know about the scandalous downfall of the chief judge of New York State's Court of Appeals. How did the highly respected Sol Wachtler wind up convicted in 1993 of plotting a vulgar extortion scheme against his former mistress, Republican Party fundraiser Joy Silverman? Wolfe (Wasted, 1989) strings together a lot of sordid and unanalyzed facts, failing to satisfactorily answer this troubling question. In a cool, simplistic narrative, she sketches the life of Silverman- -abandoned by her natural father, both despised and sexually molested by her stepfather, a jewel-obsessed siren who used and discarded men on her climb up the social ladder; and of Wachtler- -charismatic and ambitious wonder boy of the New York State Republican Party, an emotionally vacuous man who, after his first electoral failure, ``learned...how to wear a mask.'' Restless on the bench, desperate for attention, and apparently sexually naive, he was ripe for picking by his wife's stepcousin Silverman, and devastated when the affair ended. Silverman (who, unlike Wachtler, declined to be interviewed for this book) emerges as a caricature of a caricature--the nightmare JAP from hell. (On moving to St. Petersburg, Fla., with her first husband, she reportedly asked, ``Where can you shop here?'') In portraying Wachtler and Silverman and others in their circle, Wolfe settles for facile prose (``earrings...shone on her ears like beacons'') and characterizations (``She refused to let his confession crush her...she'd always had a strong ego''). And she doesn't shed light on how Wachtler was able to function effectively as a judge while suffering from what his psychiatrist said was a drug-induced mania (from Tenuate, Pamelor, Halcion, and other drugs). Likewise, she offers scant evidence for her conclusion that Wachtler ``spent his life concealing, perhaps even from himself, that his nature contained a dark as well as a bright side.'' Wolfe reduces an electrifying tale of power and disgrace into a lifeless narrative, and compelling figures into straw men. (Frist serial to Vanity Fair; Literary Guild selection) -- Copyright ©1994, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Sol Wachtler was the chief judge of New York State's highest court until he was arrested by the FBI in 1992 for extortion. In his powerful position, Wachtler had the reputation of being charismatic, dignified, and amiable, so it was more than a shock to those who knew him that he had been arrested for demanding money and threatening the lives of his ex-lover, Joy Silverman, and her daughter. Wolfe chronicles Wachtler's life and the gradual entwining of the lives of his wife, his lover, and their families. Keeping the characters straight is sometimes difficult, but what emerges is one man's tragic slide, through medication or mental illness, from power. The writing is well organized but sometimes strays into extraneous detail. An epilog, not seen, will update Wachtler's troubles since his incarceration. For popular true crime collections.
Christine Moesch, Buffalo & Erie Cty. P.L., N.Y.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.