[707] The Firm – John Grisham

” Tired? I’m dead. In the past three weeks I’ve been a janitor, a secretary, a lawyer, a banker, a whore, a courier and a private investigator. I’ve flown to Grand Cayman nine times, bought nine sets of new luggage and hauled back a ton of stolen documents. I’ve driven to Nashville four times and flown ten. I’ve read so many bank records and legal crap I’m half blind. And when it’s bedtime, I put on my little Dustbusters shirt and play maid for six hours. I’ve got so many names, I’ve written them on my hand so I won’t get confused. ” (Ch.33, p.427)

The Firm is not a courtroom thriller like A Time to Kill, but more a tale of conspiracy full of paranoia-driven events. Mitchell McDeere graduates from Harvard Law and is about to begin his career as a lawyer. Lured by money and associated perks, he finds himself as a tax lawyer in the Memphis law firm Bendini, Lambert & Locke, one that has carefully vetted him and made an offer too good to refuse.

At first it’s all legitimate work. But quickly the firm controls Mitch’s life and encroaches on every aspect. Mitch manages to work 16 hours a day, and as soon as he starts he is up to his ears in deadlines. The firm is demanding and exclusive. Social life revolves around lawyers and partners in the firm—almost like a cult. Before the McDeeres even suspect any sinister undertakings under the cover of a legitimate law firm business, a senior partner invites them out to dinner while his crew wire the house and tap the phone. This slow build of the story really builds the suspense and creepiness.

They lure you with the money. They smother you with work that looks legitimate. Then, after a few years, you’ve unwittingly become a part of the conspiracy. You’re nailed, and there’s no getting out. (Ch.2, p.321)

When approached by the FBI, Mitch realizes he is edged between a rock and a hard place. The FBI is determined to infiltrate the firm, owned and run by some crime powerhouse, with Mitch’s help, in hopes of collecting information on certain shady clients. Mitch himself become suspicious of the morbidly high mortality rate of the firm. Three lawyers died in dubious circumstances, and two just perished in a diving accident in the Grand Cayman. Together with the secretary of a private investigator, who also died at the hand of the mafia that run the firm, Mitch is on a roll to secure incriminating evidence of the firm, constantly dodging, outsmarting, and getting ahead of his enemy.

This place is eerie. I can’t put my finger on it, but those people make my skin crawl. (Ch.15, p.192)

The Firm is a page-turner, with all the decoys and talking in codes, dodging, and espionage. But the story-line doesn’t launch itself into the epic thriller that the plot threatens to become. It starts very promising, with the sleep-building suspense and claustrophobic atmosphere of the firm, but crumples into a muted, ambivalent ending that doesn’t do justice to all the clandestine meetings, prowlings, and dangerous pursuit. There’s a lack of detail regarding the crucial money laundering activities, almost non-existent legal talk and proceedings. Good read, and not as good as A Time to Kill.

527 pp. Dell Books. Pocket Paper. [Read|Skim|Toss] [Buy|Borrow]

[705] A Time to Kill – John Grisham

” But the system was not working now. It was conspiring to keep him in jail, to break him, to make orphans of his children. It seemed determined to punish him for performing an act he considered unavoidable. ” (Ch.16, p.208)

A Time to Kill, John Grisham’s first novel, is a riveting story of retribution and justice set in the South. Not only does it evoke the classic To Kill A Mockingbird, it resonates even in the present and puts the Ferguson incident into perspective.

The tiny (fictional) town of Clanton, Mississippi, is shocked when two drunk and drug-addled viciously assault and rape a ten-year-old girl. They try to hang her but fail to kill only because they could not find a bridge from which to throw the child. Tonya Hailey sustains both physical and emotional damage. The thugs have wrecked her little body and ruined her mind. They are quickly arrested and charged with kidnapping, rape, and assault, when the girl’s father, a decorated Vietnam veteran, takes the law into his own hands and kills the men outside the courthouse.

You just don’t shoot a person, or persons, in cold blood, and then tell the jury they needed killing, and expect to walk out of the courtroom. (Ch.8, p.100)

The case is complicated by the fact that the victim and her daughter are black while the two dead thugs are white. The young, up-and-coming lawyer, Jake Brigance, is confronted by the most difficult case: a black father has killed two whites who gruesomely violated his daughter. Not only is he has been prejudiced by every person in the county, he is subjected to a trial that is gauged by white standard. The issue is assurance of fairness—because of he racial divide, a black father and a white father would not have equal chances with the jury, let alone a predominantly white jury. The trial of Carl Lee Hailey is therefore a high-profile, volatile, controversial case that arouses passion for and against the defendant. It also brings forth opportunistic lawyers trying to chase the case from Jake Brigance to get public exposure. Carefully orchestrates his defense, Brigance relies on the crucial point of justifiable homicide by reason of insanity. The depiction of legal preparation is brilliant.

It was their lives the State was attempting to justify. Who would miss them except their mothers? Child rapists. Drug pushers. Would society miss such productive citizens? Wasn’t Ford County safer without them? (Ch.40, p.613)

A Time to Kill is a provocative read that grabs you from the start. Grisham raises very thought-provoking questions on races and justice. It’s more than just a page-turning legal thriller. He creates a social fabric through a colorful array of caricatures. The blue blood mentor, the hot-shot defense lawyer, a big city millionaire pimp, the ambitious smug DA, the Klansmen, the church reverend—all play their parts into the diverse perspectives and prejudices revolving around a case where the stakes are high and the pressure continued to build. The book is an intense social commentary that begs the question: can justice be truly color-blind?

655 pp. Dell Books. Pocket Paper. [Read|Skim|Toss] [Buy|Borrow]

Nail Biter

“So, he’s directly under your care, then, Doctor?”

“I suppose.”

“And what is his diagnosis, Doctor?”

“I really don’t know. I have a lot of patients and—”

“Paranoid schizophrenic?”

“It’s possible, yes.”

“Now, Doctor, I want to make this clear for the jury. In 1975 you testified that Danny Booker was legally sane and understood exactly what he was doing when he committed his crime, and the jury disagreed with you and found him not guilty, and since that time he has been a patient in your hospital, under your supervision, and treated by you as a paranoid schizophrenic. Is that correct?” (Ch.40, A Time to Kill)

A legal thriller that pushes me to the edge of my seat is exactly what I need on a rainy, order-take-out kind of night. John Grisham is really good. It’s more than a page-turning legal thriller. He creates the whole social fabrics and all the contradicting forces and opinions to a most pivotal case.

[633] Innocent – Scott Turow

Read and reviewed: Pattaya, Thailand

” I hover then, above myself, my soul looking down on my hungry heart. How can longing unfulfilled seem to be the only meaningful emotion in life? But it does. ” (Part 1, II, 11)

Innocent picks up from where Presumed Innocent left off twenty years ago, since Rusty Sabich went on trial for the twisted murder of his lover and colleague Carolyn Polhemus. The opening of the sequel is somewhat dubious and far-fetched: Rusty is still married to Barbara, his volatile, unhappy wife. Rusty, now 60 and the chief judge of the State Court of Appeals, had decided to stay married to her when she was diagnosed with bipolar disorder. They returned to the life they’d had before the Polhemus trial—so what if Barbara played a diabolical role in that case. It’s for the best for their emotionally fragile son, Nat.

I gave up thinking I fully understood my parents—either one of them—a long time ago. Who they were to each other, or in the parts of their lives that never touched mine, is something I won’t ever completely comprehend. It’s a little like trying to figure out who actors really are bwyond the roles they play on-screen. (Part 2, 36)

Innocent opens with the shocking scene of Rusty sitting on his bed next to Barbara, who is dead. He has accompanied the body for a day before calling his son or the police. The initial reports says Barbara died of heart failure, but Rusty’s old adversary, Tommy Molto, now the acting prosecuting attorney, is looking into her death, egged on by his zealous chief of deputy. Rusty, they suspect, was having an affair and might have murdered his wife rather than go through a messy divorce.

He had pounded Sabich, but there had been a stubborn center to the man. There was not a minute when he looked as if he had killed anybody. Not that he would. Tommy had never spent a lot of time trying to figure out exactly what was wrong with Rusty, but it was something deep and complex. (Part 3, 27)

What is wrong with Rusty is not that he has killed his wife, trying to feed her food that triggers adverse reaction with her antidepressant. It is about the “unnamable piece of happiness” that has eluded him his entire life. At age 60, he wants to throw off the dutiful restraint on which he’s staked his life. He begins an affair with his former clerk and finds himself unexpectedly falling in love. When circumstantial evidence points to his overdosing the wife, he stands in trial. A confluence of events and witness testimony also help prosecution build a persuasive case.

Two story lines that dovetail with implacable momentum keeps the pages turning. One involves events leading to Barbara’s death; the other recounts what constitutes a terrible case of déjà vu for Rusty. Unlike its predecessor, it doesn’t foray into a look at how justice system is intertwined with politics and municipal corruption. But Turow does pull off the whip-sharp courtroom exchanges and the twist and counter-twist. The last-minute revelation does turn everything on its head. I have the feeling that sometimes it’s unnecessary to uncover the absolute truth because the courtroom is like a roll of dice “where the million daily details of a life suddenly get elevated to evidence of murder.”

539 pp. Vision. Pocket Paper. [Read|Skim|Toss] [Buy|Borrow]

[630] Presumed Innocent – Scott Turow

Read in Chiangmai, Thailand; reviewed in Pattaya, Thailand

” I do not care much about the way the women gape at me when I walk around in the village center. I do not worry about my reputation, or the fact that for the rest of my life, even if charges are dropped tomorrow, many people will cringe reflexively whenever they hear my name. I do not worry about how hard it will be for me to find work as an attorney if I am acquitted. But the steady emotional erosion, the sleeplessness, the manic anxiety I cannot pretend about or minimize. ” (Ch.25, p.238)

First published in 1987 (don’t know why I have waited so long to read it), Presumed Innocent is an explosive work featuring an investigator-as-suspect plot. After reading many mysteries and crime thrillers, I can say that this book deserves to be read as a seminal work in the history of the melding of literary and genre fiction. Despite a slow beginning, which is a lot of back story involving politics and rivalry, the book only draws reader deeper into the multiple layers of a legal thriller. It takes the standard conceit of a murder mystery (the whodunit) and the central concern of literary fiction (a deep psychological understanding of a central figure’s soul) and wraps them into one propulsive narrative package.

Mr. Della Guardia, you’re tryin to show here that Mr. Sabich hindered the gathering of evidence, as a way to prove guilty knowledge. And the prosecution is entitled to do that, but the defense is entitled to show that the evidence that is being presented was actually gathering through his efforts. (Ch.31, p.325)

Rusty Sabich is an assistant prosecutor who cheated on his wife, and later was charged with the murder of his mistress, Carolyn Polhemus, a lawyer from the prosecuting attorney’s office. Turow unwinds the plot with brilliant cat-and-mouse meanness. Carolyn was found dead in her own home. She was raped, tied up, and bludgeoned. Physical evidence, including a glass with Sabich’s fingerprints and fibers from his home carpet, points to Rusty as the killer. As the courtroom scenes slowly unveil, it’s revealed that the victim herself was no saint. She slept her way to the top and was involved in some dubious undertakings that upon further investigation, would also compromise the jobs of some incumbent officials. The probe of her murder only reveals how political it all is and the undercurrents of venom between lawyers and police and between sectors of the society in which the case takes place.

I must have recognized her troubled vanity, the poverty of feeling that reduced her soul. I must have known that what she offered was only the grandest of illusions. But I still I felt for that legend she had made up about herself. (Closing Argument, p.463)

So the book follows the eventual discovery of Rusty Sabich’s affair with Carolyn and his trial for her murder. The twists and turns that the plot makes are familiar, but still unexpected. Turow does a great job of hinting at the final shocker, but until it is laid out, reader doesn’t quite know what is coming. Most provocative is Rusty’s character, full of depth and dimension. Aside from the murder probe, the book turns to Rusty’s first-person testimony that he never gives at his trial. He quietly covers up evidence that points to his guilt, but at the same time pursues the investigation. He is more than the private person he is—he is hiding information that would have acquit him. In a way knowing Rusty Sabich and his struggle is to solve the murder. But he is an unknowable, private man who places everything he loves and values on trial. The book is a thrill ride. It reminds reader that accepting the truth is often the toughest task human beings face. We keep our own counsel so rigorously that we have become, in a way, strangers to ourselves. Read this book for the superb courtroom drama and for the portrayal of a political struggle from within.

463 pp. Grand Central/Hachette. Pocket Paper. [Read|Skim|Toss] [Buy|Borrow]