I have always fancied reading Grisham, now that I did, withstanding the expedient timing as a law student, it was worth the wait. People always say Grisham writes 'Lawyer stuff', pompous legal terminology/jargons incoherent by people of non-legal background. NOT TRUE.
It begins with Clay Cater, a public defender unwillingly accepting a case of 'random killing' by a man named Tequila Watson. Like every law graduate Clay planned to be a litigator in a big corporation but was stuck in the OPD (office of public defender) which yields little green. Then as Clay unfolds this mystery killing a fireman shows up which completely changes his life. If a company screws up and notices before the lawyers do, it hires a fireman to enter quietly, clean up the mess and leave, saving the company a bunch of money. For a brief amount of time, I seriously considered it as a career option. This fireman- Max, reveals that when Tequila killed a man, he was under the influence of Tarvan, a pill gone bad. Now, a lot of people took that pill and if it were to be proved dangerous the company could suffer infinite law suits, millions of dollars and loss of investors. To save all this the company hired Max, who in turn convinced Clay to settle the cases quietly, for this Clay gets a lot of money. He needs this money to match his rich girlfriend, Rebecca, hence he accepts. Clay gets a truckload of money, settles the cases, the victims’ family get a lot of money, no lawsuits, everyone is happy. Not for long, later there’s another bad drug and the fireman advices Clay to prepare a class action law suit and promises insider trade (illegal). Clay wins, earns millions of dollars. There’s another class action law suit against a drug for which clay shed a lot of his aforementioned money but the FBI enters the picture and things go south for clay.
This is a first-person narrative, meaning, Clay’s side of the story, I was rooting for Clay all the way, but the ending is very beautiful, tragic but expected. I think the one thing we should take from this book is not to be avarice. Clay was the King of Torts for a brief period but his want to earn more, be more led to his dethronement. The one thing I learnt a lot about was class action law suits and how to never file them. Just kidding.
Legal or no legal background give this book a try, it’s not very adrenaline inducing but would surely keep you hooked. Hope the review helped :)