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Grab that cash with both hands ….

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The Summons

John Grisham

Nothing like second-hand bookshops to deliver the goods even if they’re so often full of pap, sap and crap. Grisham’s no stranger in these places, what with more than 50 runaway best-sellers and 50 million sales, and well worth a revisit.

When lawyer Ray Atlee’s father, a well-regarded judge, falls off the perch to cancer, there’s just him and a hopeless addict brother to figure in his role as executor of the old boy’s will. Mum’s long gone. Apart from a near-derelict antebellum home in old Mississippi, there’s a not-so-grand total of just six grand in the kitty.

Until, that is, Ray finds a cash cache of some $3 million squirrelled away in the house.

Where the hell did it come from? The old man was straight as a die. Never ever earned anything like this much. He’d given all his other money away, to charities and anyone who needed it.

What to do with it? Declare it in the estate and the IRS will help itself to half. Is it clean? Is it marked? Did the judge actually own it?

If Ray splits it with junkie bro, how long will said bad-arse last before OD-ing?

All the makings of a fair dilemma, and one which rapidly becomes a dilemma on steroids as other more serious bad-arses start intimidating Ray with break-ins, tracking his movements with millimetre precision, fires, phone and letter threats, phoney authority cautions ….

Ray’s a sharp lawyer himself and sets about figuring how to stash, launder and invest the money. If only his pursuers didn’t know every hidey-hole he tucks away the cash, forcing him into a wild nomadic lifestyle with a boot-load of cash while trying to investigate a mysterious trial his father adjudicated.

Enter the big end of town, unscrupulous lawyers, class actions, murderous flunkies and Ray’s basically at his wit’s end. Just when he thinks he get to the bottom of the mystery, with all its attendant moral ambiguities, you’d be tempted to think it’s a fair way to wrap up a scintillating tale.

But Grisham, as usual, has a few surprises up his sleeve. If you’re paying attention, you might anticipate them but then again maybe not.

Gripping, solidly-paced and clever stuff – at a good second-hand store near you.

 

Time for mercy … for readers

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A TIME FOR MERCY: by John Grisham, Hachette

So your stepdad’s a monster. A drunken, dishonourably-discharged army grunt-turned-cop who regularly bashes your mum, your sister and yourself.

When he belts and kills your mum, Josie, in his latest boozed fury, you figure you know who’s next. But what to do? This has been going on for months but now he’s passed out you grab his gun and pop him one in the skull before he wakes and lurches into another murderous rampage.

Sixteen-year-old Drew is small for his age, tiny in fact. Kiera, his 14-year-old-sister, is far more developed and it hasn’t been overlooked by the stepdad. No-one knows it yet, but she’s pregnant to him.

Stu Kofer’s police colleagues at Clanton, Mississippi, are outraged that one of their own is murdered in his bed. His family is bloodthirsty and bent on revenge. Almost everyone in town is appalled and wants young Drew executed.

Lawyer Jack Brigance soon learns Kofer’s been leading a double life: well-regarded, respectable copy by day; mongrel, out-of-control, violent boozer by night. Kofer’s colleagues have somehow failed to report previous reports by Josie.

Author Grisham’s at it again, detailing every iota of a legal journey that slowly but surely reveals the motivations of young Drew. Matters aren’t assisted by the fact Kofer didn’t actually kill Josie, but rather KO’d her when he smashed her jaw to pieces. Kids couldn’t tell the difference.

Brigance, normally highly regarded too, is suddenly on the nose. He finds himself facing assault, obstruction, loss of business and income, and wholesale disdain. But as Drew’s murder trial unfolds, Brigance makes it  clear Kofer was an appalling piece of work.

The more he reveals – cover-ups, bashings, rapes –  the more Kofer’s friends dig their heels in, even on the jury, which can’t come up with any better than a split vote.

Thing here is that Grisham takes 464 pages to relate every miniscule detail he can think of, robbing an otherwise fast-paced story of its momentum. The jury’s selection is mind-numbing.

And given everything that’s painstakingly turned to ordure for Brigance through the course of the tale, it is nothing short of remarkable how Grisham pulls together a happy-ever-after ending in a matter of a few final pages.

Verdict: Contrived and silly. Why would an entire town think a small kid shoots a cop just for kicks when his mother has been smashed and broken by the bloke, when he and his sister are next in line, and when the cops won’t do anything to protect them?

Then again, looking at the kind of rubbish too many people in the failed state of America believe these days, Grisham might be closer to the mark than I’m crediting him.