An appealing read! (The Appeal - John Grisham)

Member Name: mum2boys82

Product:	The Appeal - John Grisham
Date:	11/04/09 (202 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: A great read

Disadvantages: None for me

On the front of this book it claims to be John Grisham's first legal thriller in 3 years, I was really excited to see that he was back to legal stuff after suffering through 'Playing for pizza' a few months back.

I was not disappointed with this book with lots of twists and turns and the way he keeps the most important facts until almost the very last chapter, keeping you on the edge of your seat!

The story is based around a town called Bowmore in Mississippi and starts with a verdict on a very big case involving a company called Krane Chemical. Krane Chemical are being sued by a widow whose son and husband have died from cancer caused by, they claim, the drinking water in the town which has been poisoned and made undrinkable by the illegal dumping of various carcinogenic chemicals made in the process of making pesticides by the large Krane Chemical company whose warehouse is now shut down in the middle of their town.

The verdict delivered is one of the largest of it's kind forcing Krane Chemical to pay $40 million in damages. Immediately the legal team of Krane Chemical launch an appeal to over rule the verdict. The winning of the appeal is based on whether they can get a sympathetic judge elected to the appeal court. This is where all the underhanded tactics come out and John really uses his imagination, although not being American maybe elections really are like he writes and maybe he didn't have to use his imagination much!

The book then goes on to detail how the whole town awaits the verdict of an appeal, which is set to possibly turn around the decision of the court.

Will they manage to get the right judge elected to the court of appeal? Will he vote in Krane's favour even if elected? Will Krane be found out?

I won't spoil the ending for you, as I say he saves the best for last so you never know what is going to happen, and any fans of John Grisham will know he doesn't always pick the ending you might expect! In fact sometimes I wish he would add a last bit to the book of how he would have ended the story if he had taken the opposite decision!

As always this legal thriller was well written, and split into many chapters, which makes for easy reading. You can easily just read one or two chapters at a time with each chapter taking me around 10 minuets or less to read. You can also sit down to a long session with this book without getting bored, it is a real page turner for me. Although no lengthy descriptions are given of the characters you do feel empathy to those in Bowmore and take a fairly instant dislike to the owner of Krane Chemical, Mr Carl Trudeau.

The legal language used is always explained and you never get the feeling that John Grisham uses language to confuse you in any way.

I would definitely recommend this book if you have enjoyed other Grisham legal novels. I am hoping that he realised his error with the football books and will stick with the legal stuff from now on!

Printed by arrow books
RRP £7.99
499 pages

Summary: Grisham back to his old self.