The King of Torts - John Grisham

I've never been a fan of John Grisham, although never from a position of great knowledge. He was an author I'd avoided based largely on reputation, as I didn't think his courtroom style thrillers would really appeal to the horror fan I've always considered myself to be. My avoidance of Grisham was so complete that a book of his I was given as a gift sat unwanted and unopened on my shelf for more than 18 months until I really couldn't find anything else to read recently.

Clay Carter is a lawyer working in Washington's Office of the Public Defender, the bottom of the line for lawyers, in that all their clients are people who cannot afford their own lawyer. After five years of trying to defend clients who are almost always guilty, he's sick of it. To make things worse, his girlfriend's parents think his job makes him beneath her and she's starting to agree with them, even more so when he turns down a chance her father gives Clay to take a step up the career ladder.

In a very short space of time, Clay's life goes a little wrong. He gets a murder case, with another indefensible client, dumped in his lap. And he gets dumped in his personal life as well, with his girlfriend deciding to agree with her father that Clay's refusal of the job he'd found was final proof that he has no ambition and isn't right for her.

But when life is as low as you think it can go, the only way is up. Within days, Clay has been contacted by someone offering him riches he'd never dreamed of, and the way to earn enough money to change his life completely. For the first time in his life, everything seems to be going Clay's way.

Grisham has quite an easy style that keeps the pages turning, and the story has enough events happening to keep it interesting, which helps it fly by. He's not quite in the same all action style of writing as Elmore Leonard, but there's very little that happens in "King of Torts" that doesn't progress the story. There's a little bit of what feels like padding at a couple of points, and not all of the back story seems totally necessary, but this is the exception rather than the rule, as seems to be the case with a lot of writers.

For me, however, "King of Torts" falls down on a couple of major points. I don't know if John Grisham was ever a lawyer before he started writing law based thrillers, or if he's just researched the law well. Whatever the reason, he can be a little technical at time. He talks of torts and class actions and plaintiffs and paralegals. I suspect that unless you know a little about the law or are a dedicated follower of authors like Grisham, many of these things will be new to you. By the end of the book, they'll still be fairly new. Grisham doesn't dumb down his legal terms or waste time explaining them, which left me feeling a little detached from the story. Although I could still follow the action fairly well, the minutiae were a bit lost on me. I doubt this would reduce the enjoyment for anyone with more familiarity with the law, particularly American law, than I have.

What will reduce their enjoyment, as it did mine, was the predictability of the whole book. Although there are a few unexpected events and although you might not be able to predict the specifics, in general you can see most of what happens coming a long way before it appears. It's never a bad story and it's rarely uninteresting, but it is fairly obvious. There were a couple of bits that took me by surprise, but the story in general followed a predictable and well trodden path.

I can see why Grisham's work appeals to the masses. If you can put aside the lack of legal explanation, it's a well paced, easily readable thriller. It's not one that's going to take up your attention and makes it perfect travel reading, or for lying on a beach somewhere, as something to take your mind away from the fact that you have nothing else to do. If you're looking for something to read for pleasure, you could do worse than this, although it isn't really the kind of thing for those times when you want something to concentrate on and it's not going to be a keeper, as it has few surprises first time around and will have even less should you ever come to read it again.

Fortunately, for such throw away reading, it can be found at a pretty throw away price. Amazon's £5.59 and Green Metropolis' £3.75 are over priced for such a book, but both eBay and the Amazon Marketplace have had copies available from a penny, although you need to watch for postage charges. You may well find copies in charity shops or from second hand book sellers to help you avoid that problem, and these may be the best places to buy from.

Personally, I'm grateful that my copy was a gift and so cost me nothing, as I'd be unhappy to have paid for something like this and it hasn't impressed me so much that I'll be desperate to read any of Grisham's work again in future, although I'm grateful for the brief distraction from various bus journeys it provided. Not grateful enough, however, to prevent my first encounter with John Grisham also being my last.