THE APPEAL
John Grisham
Doubleday
Legal Thriller
ISBN: 9780385515047

• Read an Excerpt

After a two-book hiatus, John Grisham has returned to the genre that regularly places him on bestseller lists: the courtroom thriller. In the ’90s his novels sold more than 60 million copies, and he was one of America’s --- and the world’s --- most popular novelists. The Mississippi native broke from the courtroom fictional mold in 2006 to write AN INNOCENT MAN, a true account of Ron Williamson and Dennis Fritz, convicted of murder and sentenced to death in Oklahoma but exonerated after a lengthy post-trial investigation of their case. Grisham’s 2007 effort, PLAYING FOR PIZZA, told the fictional tale of an American football player whose career sunk to the level of playing in an Italian semi-professional football league.

In the early years of his writing career, Grisham produced page-turning thrillers featuring characters who were associated with the legal profession. The success of these books assured advanced first printings in the millions. His stature as a bestselling author allowed him to undertake a major change in style. While maintaining the thriller aspect of his writing, Grisham’s work began to exhibit a social conscience on legal issues that became the subtext of his novels. It might be the death penalty, or class action lawsuits, or the bane of the tobacco industry, or the manipulative process that has become the American jury trial. The addition of controversial legal and social issues to his works had no measurable impact on sales. From 1994 to 2000, Grisham occupied the #1 spot on bestseller lists at least one week of each year. No other writer has achieved that honor.

THE APPEAL, Grisham’s newest thriller, has for its underpinning social issue the method by which the majority of our nation’s judges are chosen, and the evil that is creeping into that system by the perfidious infusion of large amounts of money into the judicial election process. The story begins in a small-town Mississippi courtroom, where a jury returns a $41-million verdict against Krane Chemical, a national corporation that has been found to have polluted the drinking water of the small community where they operated a chemical plant for decades. The company is controlled by Carl Trudeau, who, from his penthouse in New York, vows that not one penny of the judgment will ever be paid. It means little to Trudeau that he could pay the millions owed by his company from petty cash. Everyone who has crossed his path in the litigation will be destroyed.

Trudeau discovers that the way to accomplish his goal is to make certain that Krane Chemical will be victorious on the appeal of the jury verdict. To ensure victory, he launches a surreptitious campaign to elect a Supreme Court Justice in Mississippi who will tip the balance of the State’s highest court in Krane’s favor. In recent years, judicial campaigns in the states that elect judges have become free-spending battles among trial lawyers, insurance companies and major corporations. In THE APPEAL, Grisham paints a chilling picture of how elections are being manipulated by both sides in a battle for control of the courts. While it is clear to the reader what side the author favors in this debate, the portrait is disturbing regardless of one’s position. Justice is for sale in our nation, and the result is not encouraging.

THE APPEAL is thought-provoking and scary. It is clear that this is an important legal issue for Grisham, and to some degree his fervor influences his writing. No character can be as evil and conniving as Trudeau. No attorney can be as naïve as Ron Fisk, the young lawyer selected to be the candidate of the business community. And no lawyers can be as saintly as Wes and Mary Grace Payton, the husband and wife team who have beaten Krane Chemical at trial. They are a combination of Jimmy Stewart and Mother Theresa, and no trial lawyer in America can rise to that level.

Overall, though, THE APPEAL is yet another great Grisham work. From its opening courtroom scene to its Faustian ending, it is a page-turning gem, worthy of a writer whose position on the bestseller list is a given. The thrill of reading a John Grisham novel and coming to its conclusion is heightened as the reader ponders where the author will go next as he uses his skill as a writer of great fiction to highlight and promote discussion of important legal issues for his audience.

    --- Reviewed by Stuart Shiffman

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