King of Torts Review

As promised today i will be reviewing one of John Grisham's legal thriller 'The King Of Torts'. Before delving into the book, for those not versed in law or the Grisham canon can verify that a tort is a wrongful act or injury that may lead to a civil action involving damages. 

The Faust of this story is 31-year-old Jarrett Clay Carter II. Clay works as a public defender in Washington DC, who drives an old Honda with high mileage on it. Carter is getting restless with his job, and he is no longer sure that he wants to marry Rebecca Van Horn, daughter of a golf-playing, ruthless land developer. The only faintly ambiguous figure here is Rebecca: she drives an evil German sports car. At the start of the book Clay is assigned a peculiar case: a former addict escapes from a rehab center and winds up shooting a drug dealer. But the accused has no recollection of how or why the urge to kill came over him. Clay is approached by an evil fairy godfather named Max Pace who has a secret interest in the murder case. Max begins turning Clay's head with offers of instant success and prosperity if Clay agrees to form his own highly bankrolled new law firm.

It turns out, though on Page 69, that there is an ulterior motive behind Max's offer. It seems that the killer had been an unwitting guinea pig for a major drug company. The new drug was meant to cure addiction, but occasionally it makes somebody go haywire in lethal and hence lawsuit-generating ways. Clay is asked to help shield the drug company in ways that are, even by Faustian standards, a stretch. If only Clay had read the many other Grisham books that tell versions of this same story. In that case he might have recognized the sight of his honorable principles flying out the window. But Clay finds himself becoming rich and famous in record time. And nobody gets hurt, nobody but the injured and even mortally ill tort clients who might otherwise have extracted decent settlements from the big corporate clients that Clay is secretly representing. These plaintiffs might also fare better if thousands of their cases were not lumped together, the better to finance Clay's new 5-foot-10-inch blond bimbo and Caribbean villa. 

No doubt about it: ''The King of Torts'' is a crusading morality tale, and one that might even help to right the wrongs it describes. Mr. Grisham's dynamic, no-nonsense storytelling has that effect, even if his last legal thriller, ''The Summons,'' was much more inventive and unpredictable than this one. Yet ''The King of Torts'' trades on a degree of voyeurism even while condemning the world of tort litigators for greed and corruption. 

''The King of Torts'' is a classic thriller like all Grisham best selling novels.  The novel will take you through the corridors of the legal system and leave you spell bound with the usual John Grisham charm. Grab your copy and enjoy this thriller from the master of legal suspense. 

Happy reading!!!