The Runaway Jury
by John Grisham
Another suspense/legal offering by Grisham, but this one simply misses the mark. This is the tale of a lawsuit brought by the widow of a life-long smoker against the tobacco companies, back when no one was winning such lawsuits, and the stakes are clearly enormous. The plaintiff stands to win millions of dollars in damages and punitive awards, but the tobacco companies are facing a flood of duplicate lawsuits that could cost them billions.
A coalition of the tobacco companies have banded together to face down this challenge, and they have hired a ruthless “fixer” named Fitch to coordinate the defense and deliver a favorable verdict regardless of the costs or the actions required. He is given essentially unlimited funds to achieve this end, and he employs a range of people with varying degrees of ethics to dig up dirt on the various jurors. This expands from legitimate “jury experts” to borderline private eyes to criminal goons who pressure, deceive, and blackmail jurors and juror family members to force them to vote in the desired direction.
In the middle of this struggle comes a young man named Nicholas Easter who is clearly trying to get on the jury for nefarious purposes. He is soon seen to be operating with his girlfriend named Marlee as they begin to gain influence over the jurors in order to deliver a given verdict. They approach Finch with proof of their power, because he has the deeper pockets (and presumably the lesser morals), but they seem quite prepared to deal with the plaintiff lawyers if Fitch won’t play ball.
The bulk of the book is an increasingly nasty cat-and-mouse game between Nick/Marlee and Fitch, and the action becomes progressively harder to believe, particularly within the jury room. Grisham is an expert at the legal system, and he has the talent of relating technical details without boring the reader or significantly digressing from the plot. But so many times during this part of the book, I felt I was watching a highly talented surgeon removing the bullet from someone he himself had shot. Grisham’s talent is such that you find yourself overlooking or forgiving the first incident or two, but when the surgeon continues to blow holes in his patient, you inevitably cry “Hold! Enough!”
It is true that the ending is excellent, fast paced, nicely tied together, and you find yourself accepting some of the earlier crimes both fictional and literary. But that doesn’t kick in until the final 50 pages, and you had to wade through 350 pages of questionable material to get there.
Grisham’s characters are inevitably flawed – some would say inevitably realistic – often with a very cynical view of their fellow men. But his protagonists almost always have some redeeming characteristics such as a love of justice or strong family ties that help the reader to care about them. Not in this book. The lawyers are (as always) vicious sharks intent on winning at all costs, but the two main characters (Easter and Marlee) are manipulative con artists with no conscience who are equally willing to sell a verdict to the plaintiff or the defendants.
Easter’s continuous demands for more and more concessions from the judge and lawyers quickly grows tiresome, and it raises the question of the judge’s gullibility. The numerous and expert legal minds at either table seem incapable of realizing that there is a wolf amongst the sheep, even though this had to be a major concern for both sides from the start. It is an ugly story and an ugly book, and since you feel no tie to any of the characters – even the bereaved widow has skeletons in her closet – you are simply an observer of events with no-dog-in-the-fight.
Grisham at his best (A Time to Kill, Sycamore Row) is a compelling story-teller that pulls you into the town and the trial and drags you under, and despite flailing and struggling, you somehow find yourself wanting to be drowned in his glorious legal swamp. But too often – such as in this case – the literary mask falls away, and you find yourself staring at an aggrieved lawyer who is sorta kinda complaining about the legal system.
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