The Summons

Rating:
Summary: Underrated Grisham Book
Review: The Summons may not be Grisham's best work (A Painted House, The Firm, A Time To Kill and The Rainmaker qualify there), but this novel doesn't deserve the low ratings it's getting. It's slight, with oversized print to make it appear thicker than it is, but it also has some subtle complexities that I enjoyed. The main character (who should probably have been written as a first person narrator) is somewhat morally ambiguous in his handling of his father's mysterious fortune, and I enjoyed this non-black and white approach to a not-overly-likable protaganist. As in the movie "A Simple Plan", which seems to have loosely inspired this book, enormous amounts of money obtained quickly, unexpectadly and inexplicably can lead to corruption of the soul and drive one near the brink (although I've yet to have the misfortune of coming across $3 million, so I don't know how I'd fare). Things start to go wrong pretty quickly for Ray Atlee, and not all of his actions are sympathetic. Many have complained about the lack of an ending- hey, like the characters themselves, it's ambiguous. Use your imagination and fill in the blanks as to what is likely to happen.

I really enjoyed this book. Nothing terribly profound, but neither a dumbed-down read, either. Grisham can always entertain, and in many cases can actually provoke some thoughts in the reader.

Rating:
Summary: What happened to the Grisham I used to read?
Review: Judge Reuben Atlee was once a commanding and powerful figure in the legal community of a small Mississippi town. Now he's terminally ill, living a solitary life, having chased away all those who might have cared for him. Ray Atlee receives a formal summons to appear at his father's home to discuss his estate along with his younger brother, Forrest, but when he arrives he finds a shock, "known only to Ray. And perhaps to someone else," as the back of the book says.

Grisham is a good writer, evidenced by the easy, interesting, and believable way he writes his characters. So I don't know why he has spent so many years devoting himself to these rambling, boring books. The plot could have been interesting but it just droned on for me and I spent most of this book waiting for something good to happen. Characterization was good as I mentioned, but at moments the main character seemed to have some inconsistencies for the sake of suspense. My decision long ago (after reading "The Chamber") to stop buying his books new and only read them if I found them used was confirmed again by "The Summons."

Rating:
Summary: It is Grisham, but not at his best
Review: Judge Reuben Atlee of Clanton, Mississippi, an irascible Southern aristocrat, now alone and wizened, has typed a brief letter on his old Underwood summoning his long-departed sons to discuss the disposition of his estate. But that discussion never occurs as Ray Atlee, a law school professor, arrives to find that his father has died in his sleep. In addition a last-minute will is discovered. His wayward younger brother Forrest is little concerned other than for Ray, the named executor of the estate, to not cheat him out of his share of what seems to be a rather modest estate. But Ray's simple administrative task gets abruptly complicated when he discovers millions in boxes stuffed in a cabinet.

Ray decides to remove the money from the Judge's house, place it in a storage rental unit in his Virginia college town, and determine the source of the money and who knows about it. He almost immediately becomes concerned that he is being watched. "The Summons" basically follows Ray in his inter-state travels and his paranoia over the stash of money. Break-ins of his apartment and photographs of the storage unit received in the mail intensify his apprehension. He is able through some skillful subterfuges to narrow the potential list of sources of the money as well as those who may know of it.

As some reviewers have noted, the book becomes a little repetitious in following Ray's journeys and his incessant moving and guarding of the money. The plot borders on the too simple with such concerns as the authenticity of a last minute will not being timely examined. And the ending is almost predictable and slightly confusing at the same time. This is hardly the most gripping Grisham novel that I have read to this point.

Rating:
Summary: What Did Everyone Expect - Tolstoy?
Review: Reading a John Grisham novel is not like taking on Melville or Henry James, his books are page-turners with short readable chapters and sometimes fantastic plots, usually involving lawyers or law students up to their necks in some gigantic conspiracy. Perhaps the lack of such a fantastic plot is what disappointed many other readers, and by contrast made this book more appealing to me.

Unlike the "Mafia, FBI, and/or CIA is out to get me" plots of some earlier Grisham novels, this one involves a law professor, Ray Atlee, who loves nothing more than flying when he is not teaching at UVA law school in Charlottesville. As an old UVA law student myself, the setting was a big drawing card. Atlee is summoned home to his boyhood home and father's house in small town Mississippi, to find that his father has just passed away and left everything to Ray and his brother equally. The mystery of the book comes with the discovery of $$ million dollars in cash squirreled away by Atlee's dad, a well-known judge in Mississippi.

At this point, Grisham sends his character on one of his famous paranoid goose chases, since Ray is afraid to report the money to a bank or trust company without knowing the source, but he is equally paranoid about anyone stealing it. Instead he drives it around with the money in his trunk, convinced he is being followed. Hardly the typical behavior of a law professor, but then again the typical professor's life wouldn't sell a thousand books, much less land a novel on the best-seller list.

Overall, I thought the book was an entertaining diversion, buttressed by Grisham's choice of two strong and well-described settings for the majority of the action. While some readers apparently like the sensational old Grisham better, I'll take this over the Pelican Brief anyday.

Rating:
Summary: HAVE A HEART JOHN
Review: Come on John, get a grip ! This book had a scrawny story line which you dragged out to the bitter end. They might be paying you by the word but please have a heart , there are people out there actually reading this stuff.

Nothing much happened did it. It certainly had an intriguing start but the story remained paralysed and just edged along at a snail's pace and then went out with a whimper.

Why on earth did you bother.. and why did I?

Rating:
Summary: I love Grisham, and this is an easy, but entertaining story
Review: This John Grisham suspense-thriller is a true mystery all the way to the end. Set in the Deep South, as in many of his books, this tale is brilliantly written and carries on his reputation of the "master" of legal fiction. The summons revolves around the hometown of Judge Atlee, an old time critic who is a powerful community figure, but has one foot in the grave. He sends a summons to his two sons, Ray and Forrest, to appear back at their family estate of Maple Run, which they like to think of as Maple Ruin, to discuss the administration of the estate. Ray, who is a college professor, and Forrest, the misfit of the Atlee family, both seem to dread the nostalgic journey back home, but neither will disappoint the demands of their father, the Judge. Once the hour to appear arrives, this novel takes on a chain of events that keeps you on the edge of your seat. The judges death, the money that appears, the chaos surrounding it, and the determination of one man to get to the bottom of this small-town mystery, is chuck full of political foreshadowing. From the point of view of a surprised person falling into alot of cash, Ray has ethical questions of himself to answer as he tries to cover up the fact that he has found $3 million dollars that he would rather tell nobody about. But, somebody knows that he has the money! This book has an uncluttered writing style that is easy to follow, with a limited number of characters. Easy and enjoyable reading that encourages you not to put the book down. As in the other Grisham books, the author uses descriptive details that put you right in the middle of things. I especially enjoyed the moral and ethical questions that arise for Ray Atlee. The display of issues that he endures and the way that the author captures his thought process are divine and far from any other books I have read. Any reader that enjoys a skillfully written, action-packed tale will truly enjoy this book.

Rating:
Summary: GET SUMMONED...
Review: The Summons, is different from any other Grisham book from the point of view and approach, but it always envolved people of the LAW and misterious suspense cases and misteries to be solved, although it's not as entertaineing as other Grisham books, this story does shows that Grisham could take a different look and portrait a story of law different from his previous works. The Summons it's not an easy to liked book but is not a boring and dull write, it's very intelligent and detailist, although the end is suspected it leaves you wondering, was next...

Rating:
Summary: What's happened to Grisham?
Review: I've loved this author's earlier books, but is he turning out to be like so many who turn out a good novel or two, then, in order to keep the$ coming in, churns out new ones even when they're not worth reading? In earlier novels I have always admired a certain, admittedly far-fetched, logic to the unravelling of the story. Don't look for that in this one. We begin to understand why the protagonist's wife decided to leave him abruptly sometime in the past. His actions are so unreasonable as to stretch credulence. As others have said, it IS a page-turner, and the faster the pages turn, the better. The rather predictable "surprise" ending just dribbles away to a conclusion, with nothing there. In short, check this book out of the library if you've got to have something to read for a summer trip, but don't expect much.

Rating:
Summary: A typical John Grisham page-turner with an unexpected ending
Review: I have been, and still am, a big fan of John Grisham since 1995 when I read "The Pelican Brief". His books are still good after all this time and even better!

The story goes about a professor who receives a note from his father, who is dying of cancer and hasn't gotten along very well, asking him please to come back to the hometown for discussing his last will.

As soon as he arrives, he finds his father dead and discovers more than 3 million dollars in cash hidden inside a cabinet. No time has he to think about this "mostly unusual" discovery when his younger brother, an addict and the family's disgrace, arrives.

The professor decides to hide his finding from almost everyone, except one person who knows about the money too and tries to recover it...

The plot is really well written, entertaining and has an almost unusual and perhaps unexpected ending...

Rating:
Summary: Readable, as long as you don't mind that there is no plot.
Review: Most Grisham books can be described as having weak characterization but a strong plot or theme ("The Firm" comes to mind). Not this one. Basically, as I read this book, I kept waiting for there to be an actual plot. Forget it. There is no plot to speak of.

Basically (no spoiler here) the protagonist's father is an honest but tyrannical judge. He dies. The protagonist finds a whole lot of cash money in his estate that cannot be explained. Can't be bribes because the judge was honest. So where did the money come from? That's the "plot." You get this in the first few pages. I won't "spoil" the rest, except that there is hardly any more to spoil.

This is one of Grisham's weaker books. It was readable, and his description of the "King of Torts" lawyer was funny, if stereotypical. But make no mistake, there isn't much of a story here. It is almost as though Grisham lost interest in this one even as he was writing it.

I'll give it two stars because it was not so bad that I didn't finish it.