The Widow

 The Widow is a John Grisham novel. I think we’ve read and reviewed most of Grisham’s novels and he has generally gotten high praise, if not outright ravings regarding his characters and plots. In this story, an elderly widow, Ms. Eleanor Barnett, walked into a lawyer’s small office with a request to rewrite her will. She had done this recently with another lawyer in the same small town, but she had grown to distrust that guy. In fact, when it seemed she was a woman of great wealth, the lawyer wrote a clause to grant himself a near half-million dollar cash gift at the time of the widow’s death. Simon Latch, the new attorney, had seen his practice slide toward bankruptcy, in part because of his failed marriage, but also because of his gambling debts. The widow’s husband had apparently led a frugal life and left her with about $20,000,000 in stocks for Coca-Cola and WalMart.

 

Desperate to find a way to avoid his own financial demise, Simon agreed to take the case at a rather high fee for the work he would do, and he then avoided thoroughly vetting his client when she did not produce the usual documents with regard to her assets. He was afraid that if he pressed her for the information, that she would just take her estate matters to another attorney. She began to take up more and more of Simon’s time, but he kept on with the expenses that Ms. Barnett was accruing with a promise of a huge payout from her estate. Then she became ill, was hospitalized, and then died quickly under suspicious circumstances. All guilty motives pointed toward Simon.

 

I would rate this as an interesting book, but it’s not one which held my interest to the extent that most of his others have done. I don’t think this novel is Grisham’s best work.

The Exchange

 

The Firm was John Grisham’s second book and it was hugely successful, published in 1991, and after writing many bestselling novels since then, in 2023 Grisham chose to write the sequel, The Exchange. After the surprise decision to take the lucrative offer at a Memphis firm rather than to take an offer from one of the blue blood firms that had made offers to Mitch McDeere, who finished fourth in his Harvard Law School class, Mitch and his wife Abby settled into life in Memphis. It was then that he discovered the vast corruption in which his firm was engaged. Risking his life McDeere turned to the Feds for help. Such was the subject of The Firm. So what happened to Mitch and Abby since then? Meanwhile, the firm in Memphis ended up with all its members in jail for long prison terms.

 

The Exchange takes place 15 years later, in 2005. Mitch and Abby had fled the country until they decided it was time to return to the U.S. to start a family. Mitch chose to go back to the law, but this time he was hired by the largest law firm in the world and he began working in their Manhattan office. Ever the rebel, Mitch took advantage of the firm’s “no dress code” policy. He grew a beard and wore a ponytail, and he typically went to the office in jeans. But, Mitch was a star and quickly ascended to the position of partner, and he was close to the senior partner and founder of the firm, Luca Sandroni who was dying of cancer.

 

It was only Luca who could persuade Mitch to take on a case that led him back to Memphis, a place he said he would never go again. Luca was big into pro bono work, and the case was a longshot deal to try to save the life of a man who was due to be executed in 90 days. In fact, the man committed suicide before the efforts to save him could occur. But, that put Mitch even closer to Luca in his dying days. He asked Mitch for another favor. Mitch was being sent on an international adventure to Libya where he was to try to collect money from Muammar Gaddafi that was due to the firm. The favor was for Mitch to take Luca’s daughter along. Luca was worried that Giovanna was getting tired of the law and was about to leave the firm, and she was asking to be involved in this effort, despite the known dangers of Libya. Not only was Gaddafi a lawless psychopath, but there were armed and militant tribes Libya which even Gaddafi could not control. It was one of those tribes that abducted Giovanna for ransom for $100,000,000.

 

Unexpectedly, Abby was pulled into the scene as the person who had to deliver the money in order to collect Giovanna. During her time since living in Memphis, Abby had become a successful publisher of cookbooks, and she had absolutely no background for the task she was being asked to complete. How does one cobble together $100k when the insurance company refused to pay on the claim and when the other wealthy partners refused to risk their own wealth to save Luca’s daughter?

 

I’ve always thought Grisham’s best writing was about legal battles and courtroom drama. He did write about some interesting issues in international law in this book, but there was little courtroom action. However, Grisham has another winner on his hands. I thoroughly enjoyed this effort, and I devoured this book in audio format rather than the usual way. It gets my 5/5 rating.

1537. The Boys from Biloxi by John Grisham

The Boys from Biloxi is the 8^th novel by John Grisham that has been reviewed in Men Reading Books, although it was Grisham’s 49^th book. However, I should point out that he had already published 23 books by the time the blog was started in 2009. He is a master at legal drama, and he’s at his best in this book. This is a multigenerational story of two families of immigrants who find their way to the Mississippi coast. The families are quite poor and struggle for existence until the prohibition days. The liquor business was protected by the local sheriff’s office, and as those businesses began to thrive, corruption grew. Gambling and prostitution became part of the life in Biloxi. For decades, no one seemed willing to challenge that way of life. People, those in power and regular citizens, turned their heads with regard to such goings on.

 

The two families, who had been close for decades, headed in a different direction in the 50’s and 60’s. While one family owned and developed the underworld businesses, the other developed lawyers. By the 50’s, as the fathers were headed in their different directions, they still lived in the same neighborhood, the first sons of both family grew up together and played childhood sports together in the 60’s. However, each boy learned to idolize his own father, and as the boys hit the end of high school, their worlds diverged. One father ran the largest crime syndicate on the coast and the other became the District Attorney who was determined to shut down the abundant crime in Biloxi. The struggles of the fathers with one another, and the increased struggle between the sons was the meat of this legal thriller. This book gets a 5-star rating from me.

The Judge's List

 

Sooley

A Time for Mercy by John Grisham

Set in Clayton, Mississippi in 1990, Jake Brigance makes his third appearance in Grisham’s plethora of legal thrillers.  Jake first appeared in Grisham’s first (and I believe the best) novel, A Time to Kill.  Now five years after getting Carl Lee Hayley, a Black man, acquitted of a murder charge for killing the white supremacists who raped and murdered Hayley’s young daughter, Jake is cajoled into taking another controversial case.  He is appointed to defend Drew Gamble, a sixteen year old boy who shot and killed his mother’s boyfriend, deputy sheriff Stu Kofer.  Turns out Stu was a good deputy but a bad boyfriend.  His dark side led him to heavy drinking, physical violence against Drew’s mother, and sexual abuse of Drew’s fourteen year old sister.  During one of Stu’s drunken episodes, he nearly killed Drew’s mother before passing out on his bed.  Drew, thinking his mother was dead put the deputy’s service revolver to Stu’s head and pulled the trigger.  Clayton’s law enforcement, Stu’s family, and most of the community lined up against Drew and of course against Jake, his attorney.  So Jake is cast against the community and must fear for his reputation, his career, and the lives of his family just to do the right thing… again.

I thoroughly enjoyed A Time for Mercy just as I have most John Grisham legal thrillers from the beginning.  I’m mixed however on the movies made from Grisham’s work.  Once you see Matthew McConaughey as Jake Brigance, you can’t get that character out of your mind for the next book with the same character.  Too frustrate further, I’m currently reading Michael Connelly’s latest Lincoln Lawyer novel whose previous movies starred, that’s right Matthew McConaughey.  You see my confusion.  Is that face in my head Jake or Mickey or just some actor trying to sell me a car?

Thanks to Netgalley for the advance look.

Camino Winds

The Guardians by John Grisham

Cullen Post, just call me Post, is a lawyer turned minister whose goal in life is to free innocent inmates from prison.  His nonprofit organization, The Guardians is based in Savannah, GA where his staff of only a handful of do-gooders frees on average about one innocent prisoner a year.  Reinvestigating crimes and trials for innocent inmates who have exhausted all other options is time consuming and sometimes dangerous work... especially when the real perpetrators are still around. 

One prisoner, Quincy Miller is convicted of murdering a lawyer in the small town of Seabrook Florida.  The police after finding no clues, no witnesses and no serious suspects arrest Quincy, a disgruntled former client.  Quincy is convicted with planted evidence and junk science from bogus expert witnesses.  Twenty-two years later his appeals have run out and Post decides to take his case.  But as Post turns over rocks and finds proof of foul play, the real murderer intervenes to squelch Post’s investigation by whatever means possible.

Grisham is the legal thriller master of our time.  He has written a book a year since 1991, all number one best sellers and several made into movies, and has sold over three hundred million copies.  The word “prolific” falls short in describing his literary accomplishments.  The Guardians is his latest and maybe one of his best.  He uses his masterful storytelling talent to highlight both racial injustice and the misuse of “junk science” in our country’s law enforcement process… very thought provoking and entertaining… a must read.

Camino Island

If you didn’t know the name John Grisham then you’ve found this blog my mistake. This is a different kind of crime novel, one about what Grisham calls “the murky world of private espionage.” In the case of Camino Island, the author writes about the theft of five original manuscripts by F. Scott Fitzgerald directly from the Firestone Library at Princeton. The originals are a treasure, worth $25,000,000. First, there is the faking of the identity of someone in order to gain access to the library and the manuscripts. There’s hacking of the university’s computer systems and then the theft. But of course, someone has to be willing to buy and trade in the stolen goods, and that is what gets us to Camino Island, a small community on the Florida Coast, just north of Jacksonville. Next, there’s the efforts of the insurance company to find the documents so they don’t have to pay the claim. And Princeton does not want the money, they just want the documents returned.

Grisham has put forward a great cast of characters: the team of five thieves (Denny, Mark, Trey, Jerry, and Ahmed), the FBI agents, Bruce Cable (the charismatic book store owner and book dealer in Camino Island), the group of authors who made Camino Island their home, Noelle Bonnet who is Cable’s open-marriage wife, the insurance agent Elaine Shelby, and Mercer Mann a literature professor who hates teaching in Chapel Hill but cannot write anything of her own. The community of writers on Camino Island thrived on petty jealousies while still hoping for each other’s success.

I’ve always thought Grisham was at his best when he was writing a drama that ended up in a courtroom – but there’s no courtroom in this novel. It’s entertaining, maybe not Grisham at the very top of his game, but if you read this one, you will be hooked. I couldn’t put it down.

The Whistler

The Whistler is John Grisham’s latest legal thriller. Florida’s Board on Judicial Conduct (BCJ) was a small agency that looked into allegations of misconduct by the state’s judges. Usually that had to do with substance abuse or perhaps bribery, nothing like the tip they got about the Honorable Claudia McDover. A mole in her court, who was remaining anonymous to the investigators, and the mole used an intermediary named Cooley. They claimed that the judge was being paid by Vonn Dubose, a ghost of a figure who was running the “Coast Mafia.” First, Dubose had found a way inside a small Indian tribe that wanted to cash in on the Indian casino business. Then he seduced McDover into the scheme in which she had to make favorable rulings, not only about the casino, but then about land deals all around the area. Dubose had his hand in multiple big land deals, golf course developments, and related businesses. He was able to pay McDover millions.

The BCJ only had six investigators, and two were assigned to develop a case that they quickly realized was over the their heads. They needed the FBI, but they did not want to lose control of the case too early. Lacy Stolz and Hugo Hatch were investigative partners, both lawyers. Lacy was an attractive single woman whose best friend was Hugo’s wife, and Hugo had four kids. It was Hugo who was killed in an attempt to stop the investigation.

As usual, Grisham’s character development was excellent. I cared about his characters, and was eager to see how he would bring this story to a conclusion. The plot was a little slow at times, but Grisham brought this to a satisfying conclusion, surprisingly, without the courtroom drama that he writes so well. There was a dramatic ending sequence when the FBI finally brought the hammer down on everyone who was involved. The whistle blowers were well reimbursed for the risks they took in taking down Dubose and McDover. It’s a good read, not Grisham’s best, but well worth the effort.

The Rogue Lawyer by John Grisham

In The Rogue Lawyer, John Grisham continues his tradition of mocking at our imperfect legal system, this time with protagonist, sleazy street lawyer, Sebastian Rudd.  Rudd doesn’t have an office and works out of a customized van complete with driver and armed body guard, Partner, a former client.  (Yes, like Michael Connelly’s Lincoln Lawyer.)  Rudd represents the clients no other lawyer will touch…   murderers, rapists, kidnappers, drug dealers and crime lords who are usually guilty.  Representing these folks has given him an insight of the improprieties in our legal system that are ignored by most… overzealous cops, incompetent prosecutors and judges, and greedy, ambitious politicians.  When Rudd isn’t fighting for (or with) his low life clients, he is fighting his former wife, Judith for visitation rights of their young son, Starcher (named by his mother.)  Judith is now a lesbian and a lawyer who specializes in representing gays against discrimination.  Rudd hopes only to stay relevant in Starcher’s life to give the kid an escape when he can no longer tolerate his overbearing mother and her lover, Ava.

The book is written in a little different format than most.  The first quarter tells a complete story with enough character development to be considered a novelette.  The last three quarters introduces new characters and develops plot lines mostly unrelated to the first section… like the way a TV series is structured… humm.

In the first plot line, Rudd visits the local penitentiary to witness his crime lord client, Link Scanlon’s execution.  A jury of his peers found Scanlon guilty of murder and all the appeals have been filed with Judd representing him all the way.  Miraculously, Scanlon seems to have more power on death row than out in the world.  He manages to escape by helicopter from the prison, hours before his scheduled execution.  He then hounds Rudd from his off shore hideout for a refund of legal fees.

Rudd does represent one law abiding citizen in a criminal suit against the city police department.  Douglas Renfro is retired and lives in quiet suburbia with his wife when the next door neighbor kid hijacks their Wi-Fi to distribute illegal drugs.  The police connect Renfro’s IP address to the illegal activity and send the SWAT team at 3:00 AM to raid Renfro’s home.  Douglas pulls out his hand gun thinking thugs are breaking in and fires at the armed invaders.  The police return fire wounding Douglas and killing his wife then claim their excess use of force was justified.  Rudd is uniquely qualified to thoroughly humiliate the city on behalf of his client.

In another plot line, a low life hires Rudd then tells him under attorney client privilege that he has information about a police captain’s kidnapped daughter.  Unfortunately, the client’s check bounces so Rudd cuts him loose as a client.  The police covertly kidnap Starcher, Rudd’s son and try to extort the information out of Rudd.  The client has lied to Rudd but the lawyer uses what he knows to gain revenge on his low life non-client and the rogue police… all in one clever move.

The Rogue Lawyer is a good read but not one of Grisham’s best.  His borrowing of Connelly’s character idea and structuring the book for an easy edit for TV seems just a bit self-serving.  You have to get over that to enjoy the book.  But his cynicism for our legal system and some of the incompetence it attracts as well as his sarcasm, make for great story telling.  And if it does get picked up by one of the streamers or a cable network, I’ll definitely watch it.

Gray Mountain by John Grisham

My buddy West Coast Don reviewed Gray Mountain here 2 months ago, giving it high praise. Can't debate that. Terrific read. Grisham has taken on various industries in other books like Legal-organized crime (The Firm), Big Tobacco (Runaway Jury), and now Big Coal. Only disappointment, if you want to call it that, is the lack of a big courtroom war . . . a truly small potatoes issue. It's been a long time since I've read Grisham. Glad I read it. You will be, too. Wonder if Grisham will take on Big Pharma, if he hasn't already done so.

WCD

Gray Mountain by John Grisham

Samantha Kofer was a third year associate at Scully & Pershing, a massive law firm in New York when Lehman Brothers failed, an event that sent shock waves through Big Law. Suddenly equity partners were taking forced early retirements, other partners were forced to change to less desirable departments, associates were laid off, promises of new jobs to recent law school graduates were withdrawn, and support staff were being axed. Everyone was afraid for their careers. Samantha, Sam, also fell victim to the hard times, and she was given a furlough. If she would just volunteer (meaning no pay) for a whole year for an approved non-profit, the firm would keep paying for her insurance and maybe give her job back. Suddenly, there was a glut of skilled attorneys fighting for no-pay jobs, and the first 10 places that Sam applied turned her down. The first one to call her back was the Mountain Legal Aid Clinic in Brady, Virginia, run by seasoned attorney Mattie Wyatt.

For Scully & Pershing, Sam had specialized in the financing of skyscrapers which meant she got paid a lot of money to review boring financial documents. She hadn’t seen the inside of a courtroom since moot court in her Ivy League law school. Mattie ran a nuts and bolts free legal aid program to people in rural Virginia and that was all about being in the courtroom. Short on options and liking Mattie, Sam decided to give it a try. She faced culture shock in her move from Manhattan to Brady, and as she moved from her skyscraper office in New York to a down home setting in the hill country of Virginia.

This is a story about the coal mining industry and its relentless mistreatment of the miners, as well as the insurance companies and their lawyers who were adept at denying honest health claims by these same people. Meanwhile, in the view of the environmentalists, the mining companies were raping the landscape through strip mining throughout the Appalachian area. Ecoterrorists were trying to make the mining efforts more difficult by sabotaging the mining machinery and other lawyers were attempting to prove the mining companies were the bad guys. Grisham is a master of legal drama and he has written another winner. I had a lazy day of lying around a hotel pool, and I read this in one sitting. If you’ve liked any of Grisham’s earlier works, you won’t be disappointed by this one. As always, his character development is superior and his descriptions of life in Appalachia will make you feel like you know what it’s like to live there. I had a great day being entertained by this story.

Gray Mountain is available on Amazon - click here.

Sycamore Row by John Grisham

John Grisham is the master of courtroom drama, and in his latest crime novel, Sycamore Row, he proves that once again. This is the sequel to A Time to Kill, a fabulous story of racism and violence that took place in the mid 1980s in Mississippi. Unlike A Time to Kill, which starts with a brutal pedophilic murder, this story starts with the simple suicide of Seth Hubbard, a wildly successful but secretive entrepreneur who is in the final days of his struggle with metastatic lung cancer. Seth decides to leave his millions to his black housekeeper rather than his two ex-wives, two children, and four grandchildren. He leaves a handwritten will which he knows will be contested by the family, and he posthumously hires attorney Jake Brigance to make sure his wishes are followed.

A Time to Kill was made into a very successful 1996 movie with Matthew McConaughey as Jake Brigance, Ashley Judd as his wife, Sandra Bullock as the young paralegal, Samuel Jackson as the murder defendant Carl Lee Hailey, Kevin Spacey as the prosecuting DA Rufus Buckley, Oliver Platt as the conniving Harry Rex Vonner, and Donald Sutherland as the brilliant but disbarred and drunken Lucien Wilbanks. How much fun it is to see all of these wonderful characters come back to life in a new, equally compelling drama.

Jake had never met Seth, but Seth wrote that he chose Jake for his attorney because he was so impressed with Jake’s handling of the Carl Lee Hailey trial. I would not have thought that a contested will could provide so much drama, but as Grisham fleshes out the characters, he creates just that. I did not put this book down until it was finished, thereby ignoring a few tasks that really needed my attention. As Grisham does with his other novels, this story makes lawyers look both good and bad, both honest and money-grubbing. Grisham artfully reviews the troubled history of Mississippi and its long history of racial turmoil. Even though I saw the details of the ending coming long before Grisham got to the dramatic conclusion, the story held me in its grips. This is an A+ read which you’ll enjoy.