From John Grisham, America’s number one best-selling author, comes the most electrifying novel of the year, a high-stakes thrill ride through the darkest corners of the Sunshine State.
We expect our judges to be honest and wise. Their integrity and impartiality are the bedrock of the entire judicial system. We trust them to ensure fair trials, to protect the rights of all litigants, to punish those who do wrong, and to oversee the orderly and efficient flow of justice.
But what happens when a judge bends the law or takes a bribe? It’s rare, but it happens.
Lacy Stoltz is an investigator for the Florida Board on Judicial Conduct. She is a lawyer, not a cop, and it is her job to respond to complaints dealing with judicial misconduct. After nine years with the board, she knows that most problems are caused by incompetence, not corruption.
But a corruption case eventually crosses her desk. A previously disbarred lawyer is back in business with a new identity. He now goes by the name Greg Myers, and he claims to know of a Florida judge who has stolen more money than all other crooked judges combined. And not just crooked judges in Florida. All judges, from all states and throughout US history.
What’s the source of the ill-gotten gains? It seems the judge was secretly involved with the construction of a large casino on Native American land. The Coast Mafia financed the casino and is now helping itself to a sizable skim of each month’s cash. The judge is getting a cut and looking the other way. It’s a sweet deal: Everyone is making money.
But now Greg wants to put a stop to it. His only client is a person who knows the truth and wants to blow the whistle and collect millions under Florida law. Greg files a complaint with the Board on Judicial Conduct, and the case is assigned to Lacy Stoltz, who immediately suspects that this one could be dangerous.
Dangerous is one thing. Deadly is something else.
Grisham is good, but not his best Hinted at an insider twist to the plot, but… some open ends that would have been nice to tidy up.
I Guess Political Correctness Is Only Demanded Of Us Small Fry I’ve been a faithful reader of John Grisham since “The Firm”, even doubling back to his freshman effort “A Time To Kill” when his stardom brought that book into reprint. But this book suggests that maybe he’s gotten too big for his britches. First off, our heroes Lacy Stoltz and former college jock-turned-lawyer Hugo Hatch are investigating lawyers working for a state agency that tracks down crooked judges, but have only six such investigators statewide. They’re following up a…
Not Grisham’s Best Effort – Boring and Uneven I am a Grisham fan but this is not his best work. If there is such a thing, I would call this a boring page-turner. You keep turning the pages expecting it to get better but then you get to the end and realize—that was it. I mean it has all the nuts and bolts of a solidly written piece of fiction but there is just no spark to it, nothing clever or surprising. After I’d turned all the pages, I blinked several times and turned off my kindle – surprised that it was over because it never quite…