Rating:  Summary: Long Live the King! The King is Dead! Review: The King of Torts is one of the better Grisham books, a classic tale of a young lawyer torn between money, love, and ethics, with a rich supporting cast. One of the characters, Patton French, was pre-viewed in The Summons, but he was great there and even better here. Clay Carter is a poorly paid, unappreciated OPD attorney with a fugitive-lawyer father turned fishing captain-drunk and a fiancee with meddling parents that he can't stand. One day, a fireman appears and offers him a chance to convert stolen documents and insider information into a small fortune. Clay accepts this assignment, and then builds a mass tort empire and a fortune, based on other assignments brought to him by this very shadowy character. Ultimately, Clay both wins and loses some big cases, involving hundreds of millions in class action settlements. Like a dot-commer, Clay does not know when to take his chips off the table, and keeps on betting all or nothing. In this high stakes game, a lawsuit to which Clay is not a party, decided while he is in the hospital, ultimately is the event which determines who will win and who will be bankrupt. He also realizes very late in the game, that he is only a pawn in a larger game being played by some of the pharmaceutical companies that he has been suing. Clay has also chosen to move on from his long-time girlfriend, trading her in for a Georgian model. This does not seem to be a decision Clay or Rebecca can live with, even though the long-time girlfriend suddenly marries another. Clay and the model make a cameo appearance at the wedding, and we know that this marriage will not be long-standing.
Rating:  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:  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:  Summary: GOOD BUT NOT HIS BEST Review: GOOD STORY BUT NOT ONE OF GRISHAMS BEST.
Rating:  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:  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:  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:  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:  Summary: Yawn! Review: Getting kind of tired of the renegade, superhero lawyer thing, Grisham. But, as they say, write what you know.
Rating:  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.
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