I go back and forth… Is Harlan Coben my favorite author? Or is it John Grisham? They are both terrific writers. They always keep me interested. Grisham, of course, writes about the legal profession while Coben is more of a mainstream mystery writer. How to choose, how to choose.
Why choose? Why not enjoy both?
This Grisham offering is about the rise and fall of Clay Carter, a lowly DC public defender who stumbles into a series of seemingly random murders committed by people with no prior history of violence. He is pondering the odd cases when he is approached by Max Pace, a self-described “fixer” employed by a large pharmaceutical company that has realized that a drug being tested using the city’s poor as guinea pigs, causes this unprovoked violence. The drug has been withdrawn but Pace, representing the unnamed company, wants to nip any nasty lawsuits in the bud. He offers Carter a lucrative deal to sign the parents of the young murderers to contracts that give them $5 million each to forfeit their right to sue.. They all take the deal – why wouldn’t they? – and Carter gets a hefty multi-million dollar payment and financing to start his own firm. He also gets the inside track on another bad drug, Dyloft, which is causing bladder tumors. He launches a class-action lawsuit against the manufacturer and is soon neck-deep in the cutthroat world of mass torts. He is spectacularly successful and collects $100 million in legal fees. From legal defender to the King of Torts in just 6 months! It was a spectacular rise. And, of course, it leads to a spectacular fall.
How it all falls apart is fascinating. The plot is helped along by a interesting group of employees and romantic interests. And it gave me an opportunity to imagine, for a few hours, what life would be like if I became spectacularly wealthy.
It will never happen but it was fun to imagine.
8 out of 10.