Showing posts with label John Grisham. Show all posts
Showing posts with label John Grisham. Show all posts

Wednesday, September 25, 2013

John Grisham Is Back With Sycamore Row, Related To His First Novel A Time to Kill

John Grisham takes you back to where it all began . . .

John Grisham’s A Time to Kill is one of the most popular novels of our time. Now we return to that famous courthouse in Clanton as Jake Brigance once again finds himself embroiled in a fiercely controversial trial—a trial that will expose old racial tensions and force Ford County to confront its tortured history.

Seth Hubbard is a wealthy man dying of lung cancer. He trusts no one. Before he hangs himself from a sycamore tree, Hubbard leaves a new, handwritten, will. It is an act that drags his adult children, his black maid, and Jake into a conflict as riveting and dramatic as the murder trial that made Brigance one of Ford County’s most notorious citizens, just three years earlier.

The second will raises far more questions than it answers. Why would Hubbard leave nearly all of his fortune to his maid? Had chemotherapy and painkillers affected his ability to think clearly? And what does it all have to do with a piece of land once known as Sycamore Row?

In Sycamore Row, John Grisham returns to the setting and the compelling characters that first established him as America’s favorite storyteller. Here, in his most assured and thrilling novel yet, is a powerful testament to the fact that Grisham remains the master of the legal thriller, nearly twenty-five years after the publication of A Time to Kill.

Friday, October 28, 2011

Book Review: John Grisham- The Litigators (New Title)


Book: The Litigators
Authro: John Grisham
Publisher: DoubleDay
Review: John Grisham Newsletter
Available: Excerpt and online Random House on this link

The partners at Finley & Figg-all two of them-often refer to themselves as "a boutique law firm." Boutique, as in chic, selective, and prosperous. They are, of course, none of these things. What they are is a two-bit operation always in search of their big break, ambulance chasers who?ve been in the trenches much too long making way too little. Their specialties, so to speak, are quickie divorces and DUIs, with the occasional jackpot of an actual car wreck thrown in.

After twenty plus years together, Oscar Finley and Wally Figg bicker like an old married couple but somehow continue to scratch out a half-decent living from their seedy bungalow offices in southwest Chicago.

And then change comes their way. More accurately, it stumbles in. David Zinc, a young but already burned-out attorney, walks away from his fast-track career at a fancy downtown firm, goes on a serious bender, and finds himself literally at the doorstep of our boutique firm. Once David sobers up and comes to grips with the fact that he?s suddenly unemployed, any job-even one with Finley & Figg-looks okay to him.

With their new associate on board, F&F is ready to tackle a really big case, a case that could make the partners rich without requiring them to actually practice much law. With any luck, they won?t even have to enter a courtroom! It almost seems too good to be true.

And it is.

The Litigators is a tremendously entertaining romp, filled with the kind of courtroom strategies, theatrics, and suspense that have made John Grisham America's favorite storyteller.

Tuesday, January 5, 2010

Book Review: The Chamber by John Grisham

Death row convict, convicted punishment against truth
TITLE: The Chamber
AUTHOR: John Grisham
PUBLISHER: Dell Publishing, ‘94
PAGES: 676
GENRE: Fiction
REVIEWER: Manuel Odeny.

The clock is ticking away for a brutal killer. The gas chamber of a maximum security unit in Mississippi state prison is beckoning with eager executioners. A former remorseless Klansman Sam Cayhall is facing death for bombing of Jewish twins. Standing between the unrepentant racist and punishment lies a truth and many hidden dark secrets.

The Cayhall family has been in the Ku Klux Klan for generations. A die hard fundamentalist Sam Cayhall drives his family to breakdown.

With a family shrouded by shame, lies and dark secrets only the truth stands between the death row convict and a pardon on the gas chamber. The truth has been the missing cog in the trial case stretching for over two decades in three different trials.

The truth has caused the death of a co-defendant and a lawyer. The truth may set .Sam Cayhall free or kill his grandson lawyer Adam Hall representing him.

26 years old Adam Hall leaves an established law firm with a brilliant career future for a risk to try his maiden case with impossible stakes to save his death row convict grandfather.

Tension mounts to the D-day. The protesters march, appeals are broadcasted and back room court maneuvers are in full throttle.
John Grisham
The legal thriller John Grisham masterfully intertwines with authority the Kluckers heyday in southern states to more liberalized America today with effects on citizens.

With a literary knack the lives of the Cayhall family through the changes is fabricated to a climax with reader left to think about civil right movement in America, the death penalty and the changing face of America.

Wednesday, September 9, 2009

Book Review: The Rainmaker by John Grisham

Raining Millions, bring out your Umbrella.
TITLE: The Rainmaker
AUTHOR: John Grisham
PUBLISHER: Arrow Books,1995
PAGES: 568
GENRE: Fiction
REVIEWER: Manuel Odeny

after reading the book i agreed with the Daily Mail review: " He keeps us turning the pages untill after bedtime.." I concur less, I read the book for only a night.

Stuck in a profession he dislikes, law, one unemployed young lawyer in overcrowded profession in Memphis dodges mounting debts and humiliation from his colleagues. He broadcast his resume and knocks on law firms trying to look for employment.
After prostituting his academic qualification for loose end jobs he finds himself on the street with only one case.

One case which burdens him against a giant insurance company, Great Benefit, which killed a young man by refusing a claim to bone marrow transplant to treat cancer. Great Benefit refuses to pay in hope that the client could not get a lawyer. a shot
gone wrong.

It is only this case that could worth million of dollars and make the young newly qualified lawyer the rainmaker. scared, inexperienced and totally outgunned by the hottest trial lawyer money can buy Rudy Baylor, the young lawyer, embarks on the
battle to show the world the truth.
John Grisham

The book is gripping and holds the reader as s/he turns the pages. The king of legal thriller- Grisham- don't disappoint
and proves again that he is the best and didn't quit the robe for the pen without a good reason.

It is no wonder that a fellow author Ken Follett(Third Twin) reviewing for Evening Standard calls John Grisham " The best thriller writer alive:" making him have over 235 million books in print world wide.

John Grisham The King of Torts

The Kingdom of Torts, a Million Dollar Worth of Greed.

TITLE: The King of Torts
GENRE: Fiction
AUTHOR: John Grisham
PUBLISHER: Arrow books, 2003
PAGES: 490
REVIEWER: Manuel Odeny

A mysterious source selects an underpaid lawyer at office of the public defender to cover up a conspiracy for $15Million. He, the lawyer did not know that he could be ushered to be the king of torts.

The mysterious source, Max Pace supplied damaging documents to squash the perceived enemies and help the lawyer, Clay Curtis 11 in mass litigation.

This is yet another fictional book by the legal thriller John Grisham entailing the greed about lawyers and the inside game of mass tort lawyers. The story line is gripping and the set in easy flowing character.

The book is purely fictional and no accuracy to the real world. The Author clearly illuminates what happens in the greed of mass litigation. Within the author's note Grisham writes:

"If I can't find a building, then I’ll construct one on the spot. If a street does not fit on my map, then I wont hesitate to either move it or draw a new map. I would guess that about the half the places in this book are described somewhat correctly. the other half either doesn't exist or have been modified or relocated to such an extent that no one would recognize them. Anyone looking for accuracy is wasting time."
John Grisham

Public defender, attorney-at-law clay Curtis II is underpaid and stuck in an office he is ashamed to show his friends and is desperately looking for an exist out. That is until a murder case stumbles on his lap together with a mysterious source.

With the only chance to mint millions Clay takes the case dumps his client and move forward to the tort game. Unlike his previous world of poverty where he loses his girlfriend, Rebecca, the rookie Clay is ushered to the filthy rich and boasting tort lawyers. a creed of vultures circling and waiting for a massive kill,

Book Review: Playing for Pizza by John Grisham

For the fun of the game.
TITLE: Playing for Pizza
GENRE: Fiction
AUTHOR: John Grisham
PUBLISHER: Arrow Books, 2007
PAGES: 325
REVIEWER: Manuel Odeny

After giving the worst performance for a well known football team, Rick Dockery a quarterback becomes a laughing stock and he is injured by angry rowdy fans baying for his blood. Just one bad performance and his football career and dream comes tumbling down to his feet.

Hospitalized with a deem career, the football teams refuse to sign him up. They’re done with him in his country.

With all teams out of reach the only light at the end of the tunnel is what his agent can hustle. Playing football in Parma Italy- which is a thousand and one staircases down the national football league in America.

John Grisham
Firstly the Italy football is for NFL rejects and players who can't make it up at home. The fans are only around a thousand compared to the multitude at NFL stadiums. In Italy football is a dissent game with very few followers.

To add up it is only the Americans who get paid (paltry) while the Italians play for the love of the sport and the after game pizza while juggling the game with work.

Rick Dockery has never been to Italy and the story unfolds around Italy football and playing a game just for fun and getting a pizza.

Personally the book reflects on the author who as a child dreamt of being a professional baseball player. On realizing he could not make a pro career, he studied law school at Ole Miss in 1981 and accounting at Mississippi State University.

Playing for Pizza makes for entertainment reading and proves again that the ex-lawyer John Grisham is not only made of legal stuff but can venture into other professions and produce a page turner.