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 an 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. 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 badarses start intimidating Ray with break-ins, tracking his movements with millimetre precision, fires, phone and letter threats, phony 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 basically at his wit’s end. Just when he thinks he get to the bottom of the mysterious, 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.