| Product: |
The Runaway Jury - John Grisham |
| Date: |
08/05/08 (20 review reads) |
| Rating: |
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Advantages: Everything
Disadvantages: Nothing
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 sheet, until he is down to his final selection. The prosecution, naturally, is doing the same thing through their nervous lawyer, but, and here's the twist, neither of them are controlling the jury at all.
Selected on the jury is Nick Easter, a seemingly innocuous man just serving his country by turning up for jury service. Making it into the 12 jurors, Easter starts to manipulate the jury during the case, leaving Fitch and his opponents floundering on the outside, both anxious to settle this dispute as quickly as possible with the best possible outcome. But Easter has something else in mind: whose side is he on, and what is he up to?
My Opinion
The first thing to note here is that Easter is operating here under secrecy, and is untouchable by Fitch and his opponents once he has been selected as a juror. Grisham has gone on a slightly different tack here with this book, and instead of examining the actual case before us, he is showing us the manipulating world of jury selection. Naturally, whether any of this would ever actually occur no one will ever know, but the tale seems believable to the point where it made me wonder if I ever got selected for jury service how true and influential I could be as a juror. And I guess this is Grisham's trump card: putting the reader there with the characters to actually feel a part of the novel.
The characterisation is typical of Grisham, yet this is not a criticism. He likes playing off the big guns against the little league. Here, Fitch and his posse are the big guns, and the prosecution are the little league. The widow, with no money, takes what she can get in terms of legal representation. The defense, a multi-million dollar tobacco company, has its pick of the best. It is a combination that works well, especially when you add in the tenacity and manipulative skill of Easter, to create a thrilling read that I didn't want to end.
Overall, I can safely say that, in my opinion, Grisham debut novel, A Time To Kill, is his best. However, The Runaway Jury comes very close to the high level of excellence seen in his debut novel, and it is his second best by a margin. I didn't want the book to end, despite being desperate to know what happens, and as soon as I had finished reading it, I felt like reading it again. I dind't - I wasn;t too sure if I bcould cope with the intense skill at hand.
Conclusion
Brilliant behind the scenes courtroom drama.
I rate this book at 5 stars out of 5.
The book is available from amzon.co.uk for £4.49.
This review may also be posted on ciao.co.uk.
Thanks for reading.
Summary: The Runaway Jury - John Grisham's 7th novel
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