by John Grisham
Clay Carter is a lawyer, but a lowly one, earning about a
teacher's pay at the Office of the Public Defender. His finacée's
snobby, nouveau riche parents (cartoonish villains,
environmentally-unfriendly urban developers and social climbers) dislike
him and urge him to venture into higher-paying arenas of the law. But
when Clay is tapped to defend a young man who shot an acquaintance for
seemingly no reason, his fortune changes. It seems that a new drug was
rushed through trials, and an unintended consequence is that it
temporarily gives some takers an urge to kill. In his quest to defend
his client, Clay gets too close to the truth. But is he targeted by an
infinitely rich corporation? No! He is turned into a big-time tort
lawyer on the victims' behalf and becomes a multimillionaire almost
overnight. Instead of walking away, he embraces the life of a tort
lawyer and finds complaints about diet pills and other drugs. As the
massive tort cases come in, the nine-digit payoffs become regular, but
Clay is spending nearly as much as he earns to get the cases. The
private jets and islands are tempting, but a single mistake and he could
be on the receiving end of a lawsuit himself.
So, this is a very tightly plotted legal thriller very much in the Grisham vein, with a large cast of characters and no shortage of thrills, not so much from suspense as through Clay's roller-coaster whirlwind race through the world of big tort settlements, very much out of his depth. There's drama, romance, obscene amounts of money, and social critique. The pacing is good, the characters are well drawn, and the commentary is cutting. What doesn't work so well, though, is the setup. This science-fiction idea, about a drug that turns people into killers, could have been the basis for the whole novel. Governments, radical groups, and other NGOs would pay vast amounts or kill to get their hands on that drug. Yet Grisham drops this element, treats it only as the basis for a tort claim, and then it's off to the exciting world of greedy tort lawyers. It seems to me that Grisham might have let this idea develop a little more and gotten a real thriller out of it.
So, this is a very tightly plotted legal thriller very much in the Grisham vein, with a large cast of characters and no shortage of thrills, not so much from suspense as through Clay's roller-coaster whirlwind race through the world of big tort settlements, very much out of his depth. There's drama, romance, obscene amounts of money, and social critique. The pacing is good, the characters are well drawn, and the commentary is cutting. What doesn't work so well, though, is the setup. This science-fiction idea, about a drug that turns people into killers, could have been the basis for the whole novel. Governments, radical groups, and other NGOs would pay vast amounts or kill to get their hands on that drug. Yet Grisham drops this element, treats it only as the basis for a tort claim, and then it's off to the exciting world of greedy tort lawyers. It seems to me that Grisham might have let this idea develop a little more and gotten a real thriller out of it.
four stars
