Sorry, John - Not that Appealing
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Author: John Grisham
Title: The Appeal Genre: mystery John Grisham's latest begins at the end. Well, at least, it begins at the point where most legal thrillers end: the jury hands down a verdict in favor of the good guy's client. Grisham's far from done at this point, however; just as any civil trial that results in a $41,000,000 award for the plaintiff is far from done. After all, there's a reason why appellate courts were invented: THE APPEAL. This, however, will be no ordinary appeal. In an ordinary appeal, the loser turns to a higher court to keep from having to pay; seeking for that court to overturn the verdict on legal or procedural grounds. For Baker v. Krane Chemical, however, the losing party will take a radically different approach: megalomaniac industrialist Carl Trudeau forks over a few million dollars to buy himself a Mississippi Supreme Court justice. With judicial elections taking place before an appeal can be heard, he need only rid the court of its swing vote to ensure himself of a favorable verdict. So what if it costs him eight million bucks? Blindsided by a multi-million-dollar onslaught funded by anyone who ever feared a verdict for a plaintiff and directed by a reincarnation of Machiavelli himself, Justice Sheila McCarthy senses that her judicial goose is cooked. Against the opposition's campaign of misdirection and manipulation, her only defenses are the truth - always greatly overmatched in the political arena - and the state's association of trial lawyers; a group more reviled in Mississippi than the French. If for no other reason, that means it's gonna be a long campaign... Forgoing his usual courtroom drama for a white paper on the election of judges at the state level, John Grisham offers readers a novel that reads pretty much like an extended investigative piece by a reporter examining the filthy underbelly of campaign funding. While Grisham makes it painfully clear where he stands on the issue - he's against direct election of judges or, at least, against private funding of their campaigns - he hasn't done much in the way of writing a novel. That sets him apart from authors like Richard North Patterson, who generally does a fairly good job of balancing fiction and opinion. Grisham has, to be sure, done quite the job of detailing how to buy oneself a supreme court judge, at least when it comes to the manipulation of public impressions. After reading THE APPEAL, one might think he'd spent a year or so studying at the feet of Karl Rove, the dirty tricks are so incredibly dirty. Where he's gone wrong, however, is in a lack of focus on the novel itself. The plot serves more to move readers slowly through his primer on campaign chicanery than to entertain. Every character borders on pure stereotype - there's the wealthy industrialist and his surgically-enhanced trophy wife (wife number three, trophy number two), social climbers who fritter away millions on bad art and good whisky. At the opposite end are the courtroom warriors for the plaintiffs, good guys sacrificing their all for a cause in which they believe (and a third of the jury award, don't forget). Then there are the rustics in the Mississippi coffee shops and those trial lawyers, each of whom seems to be some sort of ersatz Gerry Spence. Grisham clearly worked very hard to make his villains detestable and his heroes honorable - and he succeeded, for what little that's worth. The weakest character is, of course, the candidate whose campaign is bought and paid for by the villains. No one could possibly be that gullible... except, perhaps, the average American voter. While Grisham certainly succeeds in raising questions about judicial elections and campaign financing, he's failed to make his book particularly interesting. What's worse, he hurts his cause with all his broadly stereotyped characters and the vilification of the rich (which includes Grisham himself, now that I think about it). The Appealall content copyright © 2001 to present by scmrak
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