The Runaway Jury - John Grisham

The Runaway Jury is the 7th novel from the award winning legal thriller author John Grisham. It has been made into a blockbusting film as have his previous 6 novels. The Plot In Mississippi, a widow is suing a tobacco company because her husband died of lung cancer. In the preliminaries before the case starts, we see the jury being selected. The tobacco company hires the services of the great Rankin Fitch, jury selector extraordinaire, who will virtually guarantee them a favourable jury unlikely to conclude the tobacco company is liable for the death. With his big guns and highly trained entourage, Fitch starts eliminating potential jurors from the ...

A huge trial, the widow of a smoker who died from lung cancer against the big four, the four largest tobacco companies in the United States and hence the world. A trial involving millions and millions of dollars and one which could well set the scene for many future litigations, if the tobacco companies win this, they'll win them all and vice versa; if the smokers widow wins, there are millions of Americans who've suffered from smoking and they can all sue. A jury, picked painstakingly, slowly agreed upon by the lawyers representing both sides and satisfying neither and then, as the trial begins, it appears that the jury can be manipulated, there is someone ...

Grisham delivers, once again, another courtroom drama, but this time there are no hero lawyers outsmarting the odds and getting ungodly amounts of money. It's just the jury, with all those lovely lawyer/judge spats cut out. The absence of the "genius boy" lawyer in this novel makes it rather refreshing. The main characters are a woman trying to get ungodly amounts of money and a jury-rigging bad guy. All readers of courtroom dramas will be familiar with the manipulation of the press, public opinion, changes of venues, all attempts to affect the judicial system by working on external forces. So, what happens when judicial manipulations ...