The King of Torts is one of the better Grisham books of the past few years. His books are definitely taking a turn wherein we no longer have the good guy vs. the bad guy. Again in this book, we have someone who is basically a good guy – Clay, and his disenfranchised father who lives in the Bahamas. However, the book is about Clay.

The gist of the plot is thus: Clay is a public defender and falls into a great opportunity wherein he can make a lot of money by threatening class action lawsuits against drug manufacturers, concrete makers, and whoever happened to make a defective product. He hits gold; becomes a millionaire and life unravels for him. Or maybe it re-weaves itself so that his life becomes intact. I won’t say anymore about the plot here or I’ll ruin it for you.

Below are the pluses about the book:
1. It is a fast read – sentences are simple and the pace is excellent. The plot doesn’t get bogged down in unnecessary stuff.

2. Overall, the plot is somewhat believable. The situations that happen could have happened. (the time frame is not believable)

3. Clay is a well defined character – he has his good and bad points. Some of his bad points are not the worst; he does have a conscience.

Some of the negatives about the book:

1. The women are very narrowly developed in this book. Their characterization is one dimensional at best. This is probably the weakest part of the book. Clay gets involved with a woman named Ripley who is a model. Her hobbies include shopping and vacationing. How sexist can you get? Of course she is drop dead beautiful! His steady girlfriend also likes to shop, but she does it with mother. Oh, puh-leeeeze!

2. The fast pace of the book is also its detriment. It reminds me of a dot-com wherein the “hero” of our book is wildly successful beyond his dreams in weeks, maybe months. What usually takes someone years if not decades to achieve is done in months in this book. (it keeps us from getting bored.)

3. Overall characterization is narrow – there are some interesting characters we meet at the beginning of the book when there is a murder. Tequila strikes me as an interesting person; we don’t get too know too much about him. There are the requisite people who operate in the shadows. Hmmmmmm.

Bottom line
We don’t have black and white characters in here. We hope for a different outcome, but somehow it is a bit happier than I thought it would have been. This is the middle of the winter so we can’t take it to the beach. However, we can enjoy it on a wintry night when our driveway is too icy to get out.


Recommended: Yes