Rating: 
Summary: better, but not back to form
Review: I finished John Grisham's newest novel in one day. While I'm fully capable of doing this on a regular basis, it's been a while since I've killed a book in a day. It's been even longer since a Grisham novel has been interesting enough to do so. This one was. The basic story has the protagonist starting as a public defender investigating a murder case. In the middle of the investigation, he meets a man who hands him a class action lawsuit to take care of. The man gives his name, but not that of his company. While the lawsuit is legitimate, the manner of acquiring this case and being assured of winning the settlement is a little shady. Our protagonist accepts and wins, and becomes rich. He is handed another class action lawsuit, a bigger one. This one he must do the work to get the clients, but the evidence is handed to him. He hits the jackpot with a 100 Million Dollar payday. He is dubbed the King of Torts. As time goes on and he continues to push for more money and bigger case, we see our protagonist go from being the perfectly honest public defender to being a typical, greedy lawyer. Until very close to the end, there is no true conflict in the story, it is driven instead by the character of the protagonist (his name really isn't important). Near the end, the legal issues of what the Protagonist has been doing finally comes into play.I'm not going to claim this is one of Grisham's best novels, because it doesn't measure up to his early work (everything is on the surface in this novel, there is no real depth). However, this is his most entertaining book in years, probably since the Testament. Grisham seems to be giving us the highly entertaining books spaced out between much weaker novels. Hopefully the next book will be as entertaining as this one and have the depth of the earlier works.
Rating: 
Summary: A little disappointed
Review: Love John Grisham's work but I thought this was a little too boring. Definitely buy it used!
Rating:
Summary: Grisham keeps up the good work
Review: In this book he shows just how greedy people are. This is an absolutly great book for people to read so they can possibly open their eyes and realize just how bad greed can really be. There is also a good love story in it too. Grisham keeps up the good work with another great book!
Rating:
Summary: A great vacation book
Review: JG's latest is a good one for a vacation. It's fast and fun and you'll find yourself drawn back to the book. It was the first JG book out of the last several that rminded me of his ealier novels. An underdog lawyer goes from rags to riches but the money isn't as green as it initially appears, al la Mitch McDeer. JG brings us back to the Caribbean, but not as convincingly as he did in The Firm and not with a character as likeable as Mitch McDeer. But this is still a fun one and I definitely recommend it, especialy for a beach read.
Rating: 
Summary: Magnificent
Review: While this is the first Grisham book I have read (and I do intend to read all of his books) I can certainly say that this book is outstanding. At times I would sit down to read and I had in mind only to read for maybe a half-hour. That half-hour turned into two hours as the suspense dramatically increased. John Grisham's ending was perfect; a great way to end a novel that began modestly and became increasingly enthralling. Grisham's lastest book will certainly keep you turning the pages, the plot stalling you from putting it down.
Rating: 
Summary: a really lousy book: rags to riches to rags, the end!
Review: We've read every Grisham offering, including his two non-legal thrillers, and find most of his novels to be good or great, a couple just so-so. For the first time, we'd rate this one at the bottom of the barrel. It has virtually no plot: a down-trodden public defender falls for a get-rich-quick scheme involving settling a few cases with some murder victims (due to bad drugs), for which our hero, Clay Carter earns like $15 million. Getting the hang of mass tort class action suits, Carter scores a second time, nabbing some $100M in fees! Soon he's living at a $1-2 million per month {!!} pace, complete with Porsche, hired model-bimbo, villa in the Caribbean, private jet, etc. His efforts to land a third big score suddenly fail, then his second case starts to backfire, and by the end of the book, which just goes away with little fanfare, he's declaring bankruptcy and going away to hide. Grisham does manage to generate a little suspense with the two or three big middle cases, but when the last big one fails, he doesn't even share with us readers a shard of logic to explain it, leaving us not merely feeling hollow, but feeling cheated by all the time we spent reading this junque. The point of the whole book eludes us, unless it's really just an attack against tort lawyers -- a group easy to hate based on the goings-on herein. Speaking of money, we probably don't want to know what Grisham earned for this outing, but in some minds, he seems as guilty of cheating as his hero inside the covers. Don't "Skip Christmas" -- SKIP THIS!!!
Rating:
Summary: Grisham Returns to Top Form! A Great Read
Review: THE KING OF TORTS is John Grisham doing what John Grisham does best (and what he used to do more regularly) - present a compelling legal thriller which reads quickly and delivers a solid message. Granted, Grisham rarely rises to the level of "literature" (maybe once, in A TIME TO KILL) and he does not go so in depth with his characters or plot lines as, say, Scott Turow, but he is the undisputed master of the quick-hit legal thriller. Yet some of his recent offerings - THE TESTAMENT, THE STREET LAWYER, THE SUMMONS - have been devoid of the power punch that his mid-90s works had (I left out THE BRETHREN from that critique as I thought it was excellent). Well, THE KING OF TORTS returns to the level of, say, THE RUNAWAY JURY or THE CHAMBER in delivering both a quick and thrilling story and a message about something wrong with the American legal system. Without ruining too much of the plot (there are some excellent twists along the way), THE KING OF TORTS follows the rise of a lawyer who had been toiling as a Washington D.C. Public Defender before stumbling into a multi-million dollar venture as a mass tort lawyer suing companies for faulty drugs. Grisham allows the reader to share the thrill of all the new money that lands on the main character - before slowly pulling open the curtain on some serious institutional and ethical problems with this type of lawyering. There are some very memorable characters in this book - most notably a colorful expert mass tort lawyer who befriends and partners with the main character - but the tone of the book follows Grisham's usual depth (nothing too involved) and at time, Grisham (as he has always done) paints characters in black or white - this is a guy you hate; this other person is a saint. Still, that is a formula that always worked well for him, and most happily, THE KING OF TORTS is a return to the "social consciousness" aspect of his writing (taking on the death penalty in THE CHAMBER; the tobacco lobby in THE RUNAWAY JURY) - notably absent in THE SUMMONS - he forces the reader to ask, does all the litigation against big business really HELP the citizens injured by those businesses? Does it just help the lawyers? Both? Are legal reforms which cap jury award a good thing? A hurtful thing? And on THAT topic, Grisham paints in grays, leaving the reader to ponder the right answer. (Other lawyers may read this book as a blueprint on how to make $100 million in one year without working to hard... though I think that boat has sailed). THis book is an excellent commentary on a recent/current legal fad, as well as a return to what is my favorite aspect of Grisham's writing. Grisham fans will be happy that the author is back to peak form.
Rating:
Summary: King of Predictability
Review: Uninspired,Predictable. Probably written during commercial breaks of Law and Order (the commercials are better than this book) Seemingly well past his prime, The Runaway Jury and The Partner were Grisham's last decent efforts. The Summons,The Testament,The Brethren have all been weak. I'm through with Grisham, until Multiple reviewers convince me otherwise well after his next release. If you've never read Grisham please do yourself a favor and read A Time to Kill,The Firm,The Pelican Brief,The Client.
Rating:
Summary: Simply stated
Review: After reading the negative reviews, allow me to simply state my option of this book and allow you, the next reader, to discover the reasons I hold this belief. "The King of Torts" is the best novel written by Grisham since "The Firm".
Rating:
Summary: So, his latest books are disappoiting, are they?
Review: Tequila Watson is due to be prosecuted for the murder of Ramon Pumphrey, the victim on an unprovoked and seemingly motiveless shooting, and Clay Carter, a young lawyer from the Office of the Public Defender, gets landed with the defence case. There is no doubt that Watson did it, there are witnesses and even he himself admits to the deed, although his only reason seems to be a puzzling "I just felt like it." Then, a mysterious representative of a large pharmaceutical company comes to Clay with a shocking secret. Evidently, a new wonderdrug, "Tarvan" - which cures drug addiction after a period of prolonged use - has some horrific side-effects that the company is prepared to pay millions to keep quite, and Clay was in the right case at the right time. This is a deal that could make all his dreams come true, and possibly even entice Rebecca - the woman he loves - back to him again, at the same time as making him the legal-world's newest king of torts... Now, this is my first Grisham book, so after hearing that his latest are disappointing, I came to it with caution. And soon found all my fears dispelled into the mist. Grisham seems to me to be just another of several mega-bestselling authors that have unjustly fallen victim to their own popularity. I found The King of Torts to be an absolutely marvellous tale of the cogs of law, thrilling, fast, and authentic, which carried me with it late into the night.
His characters are a well-drawn, realistic lot, and their relationships are interesting. The plot in itself may not be full of action, but the book is nonetheless a pageturner, due in no small part to Grisham's wonderful writing style that is just so darn easy to read, without descending into Patterson-esque simplicity. I found myself carried along swiftly by it, floating along as if on a lexical cushion of air. It's a pageturner not because its exceptionally exciting ("interesting" is more the word) but because the prospect of reading another few pages is just so easy.
This is a fascinating book or several reasons. The legal-workings. Clay's spectacular and cheering rise to the highest echelons of mass-tort lawyers. And, then, his even more fascinating fall from grace, which therein lies the none-too-subtle lesson of this morality tale. Grisham is a fantastic storyteller, and, like other popular writers who are supposedly going downhill, I found no evidence of that here. I suppose it might just be that over-exposure to his books dulls them a little, but at first glance this seems to me to be yet another writer the reports of whose decline have been greatly exaggerated.
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