The Appeal by John Grisham Summary and Reviews
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Book Reviews of The Appeal
Book Review: "Appeal"
Summary: 5 Stars
A good story. Typical Grisham...About the law & lawyers...Yet not so much about courtroom action.Book Review: "For eight million, I can buy myself a supreme court justice."
Summary: 3 Stars
For those who believe that judges are above politics, John Grisham has written "The Appeal," a legal thriller that explores the ways in which powerful groups use dirty tricks and unlimited financial resources to pervert the law and manipulate elections. The book opens in the aftermath of a hotly contested seventy-one day trial followed by five days of deliberations. A jury has found Krane Chemical Corporation liable for illegally dumping toxic waste that contaminated the groundwater in Bowmore, Mississippi. The tainted water caused the cancer deaths of Pete and Chad Baker, the husband and son of the plaintiff, Jeannette Baker, who is awarded a staggering forty-one million dollars. The lawyers for Mrs. Baker, Mary Grace and Wes Payton, have made incredible sacrifices to win this case. They sold their home and most valued possessions and are four hundred thousand dollars in debt.
Their adversary is a sixty-one year old billionaire named Carl Trudeau, who owns Krane. After the verdict is announced, the venal and contemptuous Trudeau declares "that not one dime of our hard-earned profits will ever get into the hands of those trailer park peasants." One way or another, he is determined to win on appeal. The Paytons pray that the judgment will be upheld and that Krane Chemical will be forced to clean up the mess that it created. Meanwhile, many other Bowmore residents have already died of cancer (which, in this town, has struck down men, women, and children at fifteen times the national average), and others are battling the dreaded disease. The survivors are waiting in line to file their own lawsuits against Krane.
Trudeau is a stereotype of the cold-blooded captain of industry. He is "unflappable, decisive, [and] calculating," and a "hothead with a massive ego who hated to lose." He owns luxurious homes, jets, and boats, has a gorgeous thirty-one year old trophy wife, and more money than he can ever spend. Why, then, does he care nothing for the people whom he has harmed? Put simply, Carl Trudeau is an obnoxious, selfish, and arrogant creep with no conscience and no moral center. He hires a bunch of lackeys to turn things around in a way that will not be traceable to him. Trying to thwart him are the aforementioned Paytons as well as Denny Ott, the founding pastor of the Pine Grove Church. Denny feeds the hungry, shelters the homeless, buries the dead, and passionately fights poverty and injustice. Many members of his congregation have been directly or indirectly affected by Krane's actions. Denny is close with Mary and Wes Payton and his church is "the hub of anti-Krane activity in Cary County," Mississippi.
At the center of "The Appeal" is the packaging and marketing of a thirty-nine year old lawyer, Ron Fisk, to replace a moderate jurist named Sheila McCarthy on the Supreme Court of Mississippi. If Fisk were to win, he would be the swing vote that might turn the tide when the case of Baker vs. Krane Chemical eventually comes before the court. Behind Fisk's campaign is the Machiavellian Barry Rinehart, a shadowy and ruthless consultant hired by Trudeau. Rinehart is a "fixer" whose job it is to target unfriendly judges and make sure they are defeated. Rinehart represents big business of all stripes: "energy, insurance, pharmaceuticals, chemicals, timber, all types of manufacturers, plus doctors, hospitals, nursing homes, banks." Rinehart boasts, "Information is power, and we know everything." Fisk is white, handsome, conservative, devoutly religious, and uncontroversial. He is also gullible, which makes him the perfect foil for Rinehart. In spite of the overwhelming odds against them, can the Payton's prevail against the ruthless Trudeau?
"The Appeal" is not Grisham's best work. The author lays his message on with a trowel, hammering home the idea that judges are routinely bought by powerful individuals with deep pockets. The villains are one-dimensional scoundrels who are as heartless as they are greedy. The Paytons are saintly and endlessly patient, putting the interests of their unfortunate clients ahead of their own. To his credit, Grisham's prose is clear, crisp, and eminently readable. He throws in a few surprises (one of which is incredibly melodramatic) to add a touch of irony and realism to the narrative. However, "The Appeal" lacks subtlety and shading. Writing a sermon couched as a work of fiction generally does not work well; the message tends to get in the way of the story.
Book Review: "Forced Entry...to my attention factor!"
Summary: 2 Stars
Dear John:
Well, I was glad to see you're back. But after reading THE APPEAL you should go back to Italy and regain some pasta-fueled "old skills"! Then give us something worthy of your past great works! And also, I know and work with lots of Attorneys and they are NOT all as you portray in this book! (Take al look at our mutual old Oxford friends, for example!)
Hey, now...I am a long-time fan, but this last one stinks-up my Library!
Book Review: "Pelican Brief," re-written
Summary: 1 Stars
In many ways, this seems to be a re-write of The Pelican Brief: big environmental issue, big bad money defendant and poor little "for the good guys" advocate or plaintiff. If you liked The Pelican Brief, just go re-read that. The Appeal's ending is disappointing and flat-out depressing. All I can hope is that Grisham deliberately created such a depressing ending in order to galvanize readers into some grass-roots advocacy.Book Review: 2.5 stars
Summary: 2 Stars
Grisham, after quite a few boring and tedious 'personal' novels, is back on familiar turf with the legal drama The Appeal. Grisham's books are often about the small guy against the big old mean corporation. I stopped reading his court dramas a long while back because they were all becoming too much alike, and the writing was often very poor. Well Grisham is almost back on track with The Appeal, even if the book falls short in the end.
I really enjoyed the book's first chapter. A big corporation is found guilty of poisoning a small town's water source, which causes many to die of cancer. The big mean old corporation, not wanting to create a precedent with the verdict, will try and find a way to appeal the decision. The best way? Rig the appeal process of course. That's when the book starts getting long, often ridiculous at times. Instead of offering us a mystery, Grisham offers us a polotical election that will decide the outcome of the appeal. The characters that were introduced in the first chatper disappear, replaced by political figures and rich executives. It's almost as if the first chapter was an unfinished short story that was developped into a novel.
Yes the story is familiar grounds for Grisham, but I could see that he was trying to do something different with this novel. Instead of being a novel about the families and the people affected by the disaster, the book becomes of story of politics and of the rich getting richer. There really isn't any emotional punch to this story, which was much needed to elevate the story to the next level.
The dialogue is often unintentionally funny and the pacing is often off. After its first chapter, I was really expecting a good novel, like the ones Grisham used to write at the beginning of his career (I can't wait for him to go back to the heights of The Firm, A Time To Kill, The Rainmaker and The Partner). But because the characters are so paper-thin, and the emotional content just isn't there, The Appeal falls short in the end. This one could have, and should have, been much much better.