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The King of Torts

The King of Torts

List Price: $49.95
Your Price: $31.47
Product Info Reviews

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Rating: 2 stars
Summary: Ultimately disappointing
Review: I'll say this for "The King of Torts" -- it isn't as bad as "The Brethren." That being said, John Grisham's latest legal thriller still feels like he left it unfinished and put his name on it to get an automatic best-seller.

Our hero (?), Clay Carter, is an overworked and underpaid drone in the Public Defender's office in Washington, DC. His girlfriend's snooty parents can't stand him and he is happy (but broke) doing what he does, with his latest client a man who for no apparent reason walked up to a junkie and shot him. But then a mysterious man walks into his life and waves money in his face to leave his job and become a tort lawyer. (Tort lawyers are the ones whom corporate mouthpieces are always screaming abuse at for supposedly getting obscenely rich while leaving their class-action clients with nearly nothing.) Taken under the wing of tort lawyer extraordinare Patton French (a bit player remaindered from Grisham's earlier book, "The Summons"), Clay is introduced into a world where money is everything, the clients be damned.

The book's ad copy reads: "As he digs into the background of his client, Clay stumbles on a conspiracy too horrible to believe. He suddenly finds himself in the middle of a complex case against one of the largest pharmaceutical companies in the world, looking at the kind of enormous settlement that would totally change his life - that would make him, almost overnight, the legal profession's newest king of torts." Sounds exciting, no? Unfortunately, once the "conspiracy too horrible to believe" is over and done with (only about about halfway through the book) Grisham abruptly moves on to the moral high-horse section in which we see how Clay's newfound wealth ruins his life.

"The King of Torts" is marred by Grisham's palpable loathing for his subject, as well as an awkward romantic subplot between Clay and his ex-girlfriend (who leaves him to marry a high-powered lawyer with nothing to offer except money and her parents' approval). As with more than one of his recent books, including "The Brethren" and "The Testament," the book has an unsettlingly incomplete feel to it, as we never learn what happens to one of the major characters. As such, the book offers gleeful voyeurism into the old adage as to how the love of money is the root of all evil, while leaving this reader ultimately disappointed.

It's time for John Grisham to take a sabbatical. If nothing else, he needs to re-learn how to end his novels.

Rating: 2 stars
Summary: Grisham is getting sloppy
Review: The same book by any other author's name might have never made it to the bookstores. It is implausible, lacks depth both in terms of characters and plot and is, above all, sloppy. It gives the impression of a job half-done to meet a deadline. Although it reads easily there is an empty aftertaste and a question "what was that about". I think Grisham should choose another nom de plume and start over again as his name is slowly becoming a liability.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: GOOD BUT NOT HIS BEST
Review: GOOD STORY BUT NOT ONE OF GRISHAMS BEST.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: A fast paced, heart pounding read, but...
Review: Not since The Firm had I torn through a Grisham book like I did with KOT and yet I finished feeling unsatisfied. There is no doubt that J.G. is the King of page turning action; however, one small plot twist at the end does not keep this book from being predictable.

Would I have been excited about King of Torts as I was about The Firm, Pelican Brief or A Time to Kill if I had read this first, I think I would have. We have been spoiled by the freshness of his earlier books and let's be honest, his latest works have been of the same quality yet are no longer fresh. It's tough for Grisham to surprise us anymore because of the number of books he has written and how he has trained his readers to truly expect the "unbelievable," the "unexpected," and the customary trip to the Caribbean-do you think he has to travel there for background information all the time, must be nice!

Is it just me or is Grisham just a little more didactic in this tome than in his previous works? I think he did an excellent job with the main character and you could see the greed and ethical conflict boiling below the surface (like father, like son) as J. Clay Carter II decided to plunge into the depths of mass tort law. Grisham does paint a vivid picture of the slide from "doing good" to "doing well" and character development has always been this author's strength.

In the end, this book is worth 4 or 5 hours of your time and even though you know where the book is going, you don't mind it when you know it is Grisham taking you there.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Another Grisham page-turner!
Review: Grisham is such a great story-teller; and while other reviewers may carp about details, I guarantee you won't want to put this novel down until you've read the last page! I found it more interesting and well-written than any of the past dozen or so best sellers I've read recently.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Good, but Preachy
Review: I really enjoyed King of Torts, even if half-way through the audio version of this novel, I realized the ending. My main problem, is I felt a tad preached to. I mean, sure mass tort is bad if handled improperly. But would half of these people get ANY money if it weren't for the attorneys? Also, the message "Crime Doesn't Pay" I mean, seriously, it MUST pay occasionally, otherwise there wouldn't be big wigs like Mr. French hanging around. I don't need to watch the character get deconstructed and brought low to get this message across. I got it loud and clear once Clay started making millions, and his friends started deserting him like rats off a rooster.

Personally, I think this would've been much more exciting novel if Clay had spent his time trying to prove that the drug which had been used on Tequila actually existed, rather than becoming the next Joe Millionaire. Also, I felt Clay acted exceedingly out of character by ignoring Tequila's plight, and allowing himself to be swayed by a huckster like Max.

Overall, I liked King of Torts. But the message was delivered with the subtlety of a sledge hammer. Alright, I get it: Small town = good, big city = bad, rich people = bad. Tort lawyers = evil. If you can deal with the preachiness, you might like this book. I did.

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: It 's a difficult review
Review: This book is the first one that is difficult to me to review it, is a book that will keep you reading, but is not a real good book, is a book that doesn't goes out of the story but sometimes is a little bit boring, is a book that it really has three separate stories that at the end the last one join to the first story, it has a love story that it isn't a love story but it ends like Cinderella, I really don't know what to say, I can't tell you that this book is a waste of time but I can't recommend to you as a good book, but you will have to read it to understand me.
I am not a lawyer so I don't know if that end is possible or not. But even if you are a lawyer you have to take care of the sues you make, your work could be against you.

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: Yawn!
Review: Getting kind of tired of the renegade, superhero lawyer thing, Grisham. But, as they say, write what you know.

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: Grisham Gets Greater Depth
Review: Usually a prolific writer like Grisham gets a bit stale if he is not up to standards that he as set for him/herself in previous novels. But, in this particular novel, Grisham sets a new level for ingenuity and complexity in plot and character development.
Other reviews have mentioned the strange plot and design of the novel which will hold the reader in thrall. I suggest that if the artist keeps up with the branching out into new areas that are in this book, he will never disappoint. Excellent look into what is wrong with the profession today and how to correctit.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: Don't Bother With This One
Review: I was excited to read this book because I have enjoyed all of John Grisham's previous novels. However, the novel disappointed me after the first couple of chapters.

The story starts off in one direction (Clay Carter assigned to defend an apparently random murder case), but immediately changes tracks when a new character is plopped in without explanation or justification.

Grisham begins a tangent with the new character (Max Pace) which ends up being the rest of the book. Storylines that were presented in the first few pages do not get wrapped up until the end, and even then, unsatisfactorily.

Frequently throughout the novel, Grisham throws in random events or developments that do not fit well with the story and are not credible.

I plugged through the novel, hoping for a reversal back to the original story (the one Grisham had started in the first 10 pages), but it never came. A big disappointment, if you're keen to read a novel by John Grisham, try one of his earlier ones.


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