Book 6 of 2012

The Litigators by John Grisham
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

Easy read and lighter than I would generally like my legal thrillers. Guess it really wasn't a thriller, just a legal novel. I'd like to expect more from Grisham and certainly I used to. I'm beginning to read more new authors since most of my old standbys seem to be letting me down with books that seem to be just re-hashing of old themes.

David Zinc works inhuman hours for a mega law firm until one day he has a break, spends the day in a bar and winds up drunk at the law offices of Finley & Figg. What ensues teeters between serious law and comic tragedy. First, Wally Figg comes across what seems to be an open and shut case of a drug gone wrong and a huge settlement from an evil drug company. This turns into a national class action suit run by some major tort firms. Rather quickly it turns into a dog. During the time it takes for this sure thing to turn into a nightmare, David comes across some Burmese immigrants who have been treated unfairly by an unscrupulous employer and in settling their case finds a child who has been grievously harmed by lead tainted fake teeth. On the quiet he works to find the importer of these teeth and engineer a settlement for this family. Wrapped into the story is David and his wife's pregnancy and birth, senior partner Oscar Finely's divorce, Wally's decline back into his alcoholism, and the ever saucy secretary Rochelle.

The inner workings of tort law doesn't really seem like an interesting setting for a novel, but it was. The bumbling, ignorant lawyer is overdone in legal fiction. I'm tired of reading about him.



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