"Be careful," Mama always told me, "what you wish for: you just might get it." But surely having enormous wealth, fame, and power is a good thing, right? Maybe not, if you're J. Clay Carter II...

Imagine laboring at the very bottom of the lawyer's food chain, in the public defender's office. Every day for five years Clay mingled with those Armani-clad, manicured, high-powered legal eagles in the halls of the courthouse, an underpaid attorney who barely had the stroke to print "Esquire" on his business card. And then one day, his whole life changed: a mysterious stranger handed Clay the means and opportunity to make several million smackers for a couple days' work, and in a heartbeat he was on his way to becoming the new King of Torts. Within a year, he was a millionaire a hundred times over. All os a sudden he could do all the things young men dream about: test-drive Porsches and supermodels, even buy his own jet... everything he'd ever need, with the possible exception of the lovely Rebecca. But just as one might expect, there's gotta be trouble in paradise.

"What goes up," my Physics professor always told me, "must come down." The drama of Clay's meteoric rise to fame and fortune was second only to his precipitous descent. Mass torts, insider trading, visits from the SEC... and when the suit finally hit the fan, Clay would be left with nowhere to go but up. And the only question that remains is, "When in this crazy roller-coaster is he happiest? "

Same First Name, But...

If the truth be told, the names of John Grisham and, say, John Steinbeck rarely occur in the same sentence without a negative somewhere in the construction. Sure, both write (wrote) books for a living, and they share a common given name, but they have little else in common. Though Grisham occasionally struggles to extricate himself from the genre pigeonhole in which The Firm and The Pelican Brief placed him at the dawn of his career, legions of adoring fans have turned up their noses at each attempt. Faint praise - "not his best,” “no action” – is heaped upon each of his semi-autobiographical novels (A Painted House, Bleachers) by those who devour the lawyer tales reviled by critics as shallow and formulaic.

The Bite

King of Torts is decidedly of that latter group, following the path established by novels such as The Firm and Rainmaker. Grisham depicts lawyers exactly as the public perceives them: greedy and grasping, more concerned with fees than clients, and far less intelligent than they think they are. In a work of fiction that could easily serve as a white paper for tort reform, Grisham’s attorneys devote far more time and energy to their Lamborghinis and trophy wives than to the people they claim to represent.

Where other lawyers turned author invariably present their protagonist as superhuman – faster than a speeding subpoena, more powerful than a writ of habeas corpus, able to leap Superior Court at a single bound – Grisham has long since discovered the golden elixir, the secret to public exaltation. It’s simple, really: the public hates lawyers, and they’ll happily gobble fiction (no matter how formulaic and unimaginative) that makes lawyers fit some preconceived notion. Grisham’s lawyers fumble about in the dark, raking in huge fees for doing little or nothing, and routinely bend the rules to their advantage.

Of all the Grisham characters I’ve seen so far (and I’ll admit I’ve skipped quite a few), however, J. Clay Carter II is the most repugnant of the lot. While he shows occasional flashes of compassion and common sense, through most of the novel he’s up to his ears in venality and stupidity. He willfully commits insider trading (you’d have to be pretty blind not to notice that one), and simply cannot seem to figure out that his “rabbi” Max is far from on the up-and-up. What a bozo, eh?

And More…

While cleaving to the formula that carried him to the top of the best-seller lists – a lawyer not only puts on his pants one leg at a time like the rest of us, he’s likely to have a stolen wallet in the pocket – Grisham lets the mechanics of writing slide even more than usual. His plot is littered with the unfinished stubs of subplots; his linear narrative roars along full speed ahead while minor characters simply wander off and logical questions go unanswered. In a typical “tie all the ribbons in one big bow” conclusion, Clay eventually learns that some things are more valuable than money. Yet all of his legal problems – a malpractice suit, an investigation for insider trading) – go unsolved as he and his lady love ride off into the sunset.

In short, The King of Torts comprises an unbelievable and unsympathetic protagonist and stereotypical cast of supporting characters, and a plot that concludes with a whimper instead of a bang. Even for Grisham it’s not all that good.

Other Grisham works reviewed:

Bleachers


Moved 7/11 because the database is a mess.

Recommended: No