ROGUE LAWYER BY JOHN GRISHAM

Sebastian Rudd is inconceivably poles apart from the other central characters in John Grisham’s novels. He is impatient, contemptuous and dangerous but he’s also smart and resolute – someone you’ll easily root for. Or for that matter, he's someone you’ll instantly find repulsive. He’s divorced, with negligible parenting concerns for his young son, except that occasional visits. Yet, he has strong concerns veering toward madness for the cause of justice, and most of his clients are people with cases the average lawyers would hesitate to touch. With a bodyguard who bundles up as his driver, bodyguard and all-in-one, Sebastian Rudd, the rogue lawyer in Grisham’s latest thriller is unlike anything you have read before.

Rogue Lawyer by John Grisham follows Sebastian Rudd’s legal battles as he works out of a van after his office was bombed. Our legal ace has a lot on his hands as he battles for others as well as himself. One of the cases involved the molestation and drowning of two little girls. The accused Gardy was once a member of a satanic cult with a history of sexual perversion. With this fact known to the prosecution, Sebastian has much work to do. There’s also a case involving a crime lord who killed a judge and is facing death row, and a retired homeowner who opens fire on a SWAT team. Sebastian is also confronted with the daunting prospect of losing his visitation rights with his young son as his ex-wife is mounting a legal challenge to cancel it.

When John Grisham spins his brand of fascinating legal thriller which is a cocktail of a swiftly paced thriller, twisted tales and legal rudiments, you are in for an exciting ride. There’s the excitement and the huge anticipation. But Rogue Lawyer fails to meet my expectation. Though a huge, huge fan of the author, and someone who really wanted a massive blockbuster of read, this is more like Sycamore Row and a notch of an improvement upon Gray Mountain. Having said that, let me make it clear my appetite for Grisham’s legal thrillers will never wane. I largely enjoyed the book but it is nowhere near the intensity and appeal of A Time to Kill. The character development, pointedly that of Sebastian Rudd, was polished and finely done. And I really enjoyed the first-person narrative. Though the different stories, or rather the different cases, were all tied in together at the end, the climax was a bit flat and rather disappointing. Yet, I’d try out a John Grisham thriller any day than any other book for the simple fact that he's the best out there.

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Gray Mountain by John Grisham

In nineteen ninety-three, John Grisham delivers a stunning and suspenseful novel, The Pelican Brief: A Novel, which revolves around the assassination of two Supreme Court justices, and the female protagonist Darby Shaw undeterred by the threats to her life uncovered a deep-rooted presidential conspiracy. Twenty-one years later, Grisham returns with a female protagonist for only the second time in his illustrious career as he crafted another stupefying legal thriller, this time not targeting the highest echelons of government but the deepest pits of the dark and perilous world of coal mining.

Set against the backdrop of the Great Recession of 2008, Gray Mountain by bestselling author John Grisham follows a 29-year-old female Manhattan associate attorney who gets downsized and is forced to leave her Wall Street law firm two weeks after the collapse of Lehman Brothers to work a year in the small-town of Brady, Virginia. Samantha Kofer's journey from New York's largest law firm to a small legal aid clinic in the heart of Appalachia with a population of 2200 as an unpaid intern borders on the ludicrous. Yet, that is the only possible route back to her job in the future.

When Samantha meets Mattie Wyatt, her new boss and the head of the Mountain Legal Aid Clinic, she realizes there's much to learn and that Mattie has a lot to teach her on how to assist people who face genuine problems. It enables her to work on things she had never done during her three-year stay at New York's Scully & Pershing. Apart from actually preparing a lawsuit, Samantha also gets to work her way around courtrooms, topping it with a tongue-lashing from a judge. Samantha's work forces her to get deeper into the problems of her clients Taking up cudgels on their behalf, she begins her own investigation to get to the bottom of their stories without ever realizing that in coal country searching for the truth and standing up for it means putting your life on the line. She also stumbles upon secrets that should have remained buried deep in the mountains forever, and the connection between small-town politics and Big Coal. But Samantha is not discouraged by the numerous threats that she received and is taking the fight into the enemy's camp.

Author John Grisham paints a dark picture of the coal mining industry, the danger it posed to environment and the lives of people. He is scathing in his portrayal of the people involved and how far they are willing to go to have their way, even to the extent of murdering and poisoning streams and wells. Though a dazzling legal thriller, full of suspense and action with its plot twists and surprises, Gray Mountain is primarily an issued-based novel that takes up the cause of defenseless people and the environmental hazard coal mining has brought about by ripping off the tops of hundreds of mountains in Appalachia. It has not only poisoned the ecosystem but is instrumental in the rapidly vanishing wildlife and threatens the very survival of human beings living around coal mining areas. Grisham is brilliant as ever but the central premise of the story may not appeal to some readers.

Gray Mountain by John Grisham

 
John Grisham has a new hero . . . and she’s full of surprises

The year is 2008 and Samantha Kofer’s career at a huge Wall Street law firm is on the fast track—until the recession hits and she gets downsized, furloughed, escorted out of the building. Samantha, though, is one of the “lucky” associates. She’s offered an opportunity to work at a legal aid clinic for one year without pay, after which there would be a slim chance that she’d get her old job back.

In a matter of days Samantha moves from Manhattan to Brady, Virginia, population 2,200, in the heart of Appalachia, a part of the world she has only read about. Mattie Wyatt, lifelong Brady resident and head of the town’s legal aid clinic, is there to teach her how to “help real people with real problems.” For the first time in her career, Samantha prepares a lawsuit, sees the inside of an actual courtroom, gets scolded by a judge, and receives threats from locals who aren’t so thrilled to have a big-city lawyer in town. And she learns that Brady, like most small towns, harbors some big secrets.

Her new job takes Samantha into the murky and dangerous world of coal mining, where laws are often broken, rules are ignored, regulations are flouted, communities are divided, and the land itself is under attack from Big Coal. Violence is always just around the corner, and within weeks Samantha finds herself engulfed in litigation that turns deadly.

384 pages

October 21st 2014

Doubleday