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No, it wasn't that at all. I never cared that much about them, and they were so two-dimensional.
I finished it just for the sake of finishing it, and the ending was probably the least satisfying ending in any of his books. I got halfway through the story and decided that I would be okay if I never knew how it ended.
This book took me almost 3 months to finish. I had trouble sticking with the characters.
I would not recommend bothering to get this. Not because I'm a slow reader.
It was that I never got hooked into the story.
The book teaches a lot, and the reader is exposed to the dark side of democracy (whene it becomes subservient to capitalism), plus it is extremely timely. Grisham takes on some larger issues -- issues affecting the nation at this very time, and with the recent Supreme Court decision bestowing human rights on corporations, and the Congressional efforts currently underway to correct this heinous mistake, these are issues very much of the moment -- but in tackling the larger issues Grisham gets himself into the weeds a bit.His setup and elaboration require quite a bit of information, and once the first hurdle is cleared his second plot in the book -- the effect of corporate money in the election of state Supreme Court judges -- requires a whole OTHER massive setup and elaboration.So, no roller coaster this time. But it's more than a little preachy, the bad guys are over the top bad to the bone, and the pacing is slow up until the very end when he realized he was heading for an 800 page book. Grisham is a guilty pleasure for me, I can usually count on a roller-coaster momentum with a neat, tidy (often overly tidy) denouement. Well, not this time.
The characters are one dimensional and not worthy of care. My impression of this book is that of an author trying to fullfill the requirements of a publishing contract.
He's a corporate insider who buy and spits out companies like licorice.Wes and Mary Grace have been working the case for years, taking on everything Trudeau throws at them. They believe in their client, in what they're doing, but when they win, Trudeau's attorneys are not worried, because they believe they'll win on Appeal.Trudeau will stop at nothing, the Payton's are determined and there you have the setup for this might versus right, good versus evil story that will keep you glued to your chair, eyes pinned to the pages, heart pounding as you pour through this story. Mary Grace and Tom Payton are a husband and wife legal team and for years they've been representing a woman in Bowmore, Mississippi who lost both her husband and child to cancer which was supposedly caused by Krane Chemical's deliberate chemical spills into the town's water supply. They've gone the extra mile for the cause, they've had to let other clients go, they've sold their house, they lives have become this case. Nobody does suspense and intrigue the way John Grisham does. The cancer rate in Bowmore is fifteen times the national average, everyone in town drinks bottled water, even the public pool has been closed.On the face of it one would think the case was open and shut and that Krane Chemical should settle and be down with it, but the chemical company is a subsidiary of a conglomerate which is run by Carl Trudeau and he's just not the settling kind. There is nothing nice, good or even remotely likable about Trudeau.
Harry Jackson Jr. Because they oppose the judicial system becoming radicalized by special interest groups without regard to the Constitution or the people. Using his novel as a bully pulpit, Grisham seems to have lost face of the fact that in his tirade against Christians politicizing the judicial system, it is only a reaction to what is all so ready apparent. After reading nearly all of Grisham's books (on unabridged audio) it seems obvious that he not only sides with the left liberal political ideology, but he ever so cleverly weaves it into many of his novels. and Tony Perkins state, "The church is not called to be a mouth piece for a political party, rather it is to be moral voice to the nation." I was struck by his apparent naivety and especially his misrepresentation of serious minded Christians voicing their concerns as power mad, money grubby, inconsiderate, illiterate, illogical, anti-environmentalists, uncompassionate at best and devious in all actuality. Unfortunately he seems to be slipping in his creativity in order to advance his political persuasion. Why.
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