DWD's Reviews

Could Have Been Something Special. Instead, This Book Is a Hot Mess. Published by Random House Audio in October of 2018. Read by Michael Beck. Duration: 17 hours, 36 minutes. Unabridged. American soldiers during the Bataan Death March in 1942. Pete Banning was a decorated World War II veteran and had been home less than a year in 1946 when he took his pistol to town and shot and killed his church's minister. The question everyone had was why this Mississippi-born-and-bred hero would do such a thing. This book features romance, betrayal, racial injustice, an execution by electric chair, hit-and-run guerrilla warfare against Imperial Japan, the Bataan Death March, two court cases, a family member committed to an insane asylum, a murder, a suicide, explosions, war crimes, a submarine sinking a ship and marital infidelity. The amazing thing is that, after all of that, this book is a tedious mess - something to be endured more than enjoyed. The problem with this book is tha...

Published by Random House Audio in 2017. Read by January LaVoy. Duration: 8 hours, 45 minutes. Unabridged. Princeton University in New Jersey owns the original manuscripts of all five of F. Scott Fitzgerald's novels. This book starts out strong with an elaborate heist of these manuscripts and eventually ends up with an elaborate scheme to find the presumed purchaser of these priceless, purloined compositions in Camino Island, Florida. This audiobook was a great example of great characters but a really loose story that really doesn't hang together too well. It's almost as if John Grisham had no real concept where the book was going so he started moving one way and then changed his mind and just left his plot hanging while he went a new way - again and again and again. The result is a lot of interesting characters with a plot that goes all over the place and finally ends up with a pretty boring ending followed up by a nice little turn of the plot at the end. To be hon...

Published in 2014 by Random House Audio Read by Catherine Taber Duration: 14 hours, 46 minutes Unabridged John Grisham explores Appalachian coal country in this novel through the eyes of a young New York lawyer named Samantha Kofer. Kofer has just lost her job in real estate development law at literally the world's largest law firm in the wake of the financial collapse of 2008. Her firm gives her the chance to work for a non-profit for a year without losing her insurance or her seniority and she ends up in the legal aid office in Brady - a tiny town in southwest Virginia in the heart of coal country. As Kofer starts to work in the office she discovers the world of day-to-day law and how America's poor get bounced around in a legal system with all sorts of hidden rules. Turns out that she has a knack for it. She picks up a case with a coal miner suing for disability due to black lung and she discovers that Big Coal rules all in this region - and there's nothing an...

Published in 2011 by Random House Audio Read by Dennis Boutsikaris Duration: 11 hours, 33 minutes John Grisham returns to familiar ground in this novel - the world of mass tort litigation, a topic covered thoroughly in The King of Torts in 2003. Despite the similar legal theme, The Litigators is a much different novel and, I think, the better of the two. The book focuses on a tiny law firm with just two partners and a self-trained legal secretary with attitude. The firm calls itself a "boutique" firm, implying that they do specialty work and stay small out of choice. In reality, if they have a specialty it is car crashes, slip-and-fall cases and divorces. They are barely making it and sometimes they are literally ambulance chasers. They cruise funeral homes looking for wrongful death cases. Into this sad firm comes another lawyer. He's drunk, he's obnoxious and he's read the name of the firm on an ad looking for work. He's a Harvard-educated attorn...

  It's not great literature but it is certainly entertaining. Originally published in October of 2012 John Grisham and I have an on again, off again relationship (as reader and writer, I have not had the pleasure of meeting the gentleman in person.) I grew tired of his legal thrillers and of late I have been occasionally listening to his regular novels like A Painted House or Bleachers .  The Racketeer is my first legal thriller of Grisham's that I have read in more than five years, but even Grisham admits in the author's note that as a thriller it's fairly long on story and not so deep on the minutiae of the courthouse. All that is true, but it is a compelling read - a real page turner that I blasted through at a very fast pace for me (I tend to doggedly plod through books rather than blast through them). The story starts out simply enough. A small town black lawyer named Malcolm Bannister gets caught up in a real estate scheme thought up by a Wa...

Change of pace for Grisham Read by John Grisham 4 hours, 22 minutes I, for one, am not especially enamored of Grisham's legal thrillers but I did enjoy Grisham's foray into non-legal fiction. Bleachers was read by the author. Grisham's southern accent and good ol' boy style are sometimes helpful but his occasional odd emphasis and flat read can be distracting. The book features a Bobby Knight/Woody Hayes type of small-town high school football coach. He is cruel, petty and completely breaks his players as he builds them into his mold and makes them successful teams year after year after year. His teams have won 13 Texas state championships. John Grisham The coach is dying of cancer now and his players are returning home to honor him and await his funeral. They meet several times on the bleachers of the field they played on and discuss their memories of school, football and of course the coach. Thus, the title. We see the reunion of players thr...

Grisham continues with a trend previously established Published by Random House Audio in 2003. Read by Michael Beck Duration: 11 hours, 43 minutes. Unabridged. Grisham's The King of Torts continues the trend that he started in other books such as The Chamber and The Runaway Jury . The book isn't really about the characters or the plot. Instead, it's a easy to swallow education into how the legal system actually works. In The Chamber the reader sees how death penalty cases work in detail. In The Runaway Jury the readers sees how a civil jury trial works in detail - from selection of the court venue to clothing worn by the attorneys to jury selection specialists. In The King of Torts we learn all about how the class action lawsuit works. Ever wonder how former presidential candidate John Edwards made his money? This book well give you a good idea. Grisham argues all sides of the class action lawsuit as he tells the story. It can help and hurt the ...

The unabridged audiobook is excellent Published by Bantam Doubleday Audio in 2001 Duration: 12 hours, 7 minutes Read by David Lansbury Unabridged I am not a giant fan of Grisham's latest legal thrillers but I am becoming a fan of his non-lawyer books, such as Bleachers and A Painted House . Grisham's non-legal novels are wonderful "slice of life" views of rural/small town America. A Painted House is a rite of passage novel about a 7 year old boy (Luke Chandler) growing up on an Arkansas cotton farm in 1952 with his parents and grandparents. His uncle is off fighting the war in Korea. It is the beginning of the two month long picking season and his family hires some hired hands to help pick the cotton. They hire a combination of "hill people" (poor whites from up in the Arkansas hills) and Mexicans who are literally trucked into Arkansas in the trailer of a semi as if they were cattle. Luke learns a lot during this season, including abou...

Fairly boring story, lots of good info on Italian culture, history and cuisine Published by Random House Audio in 2005. Read by Michael Beck. 11 hours, 4 minutes. Unabridged. T he last two thrillers that I have read by John Grisham have been anything but. A couple of years ago I listened to The King of Torts and came away with a great education in class action lawsuits but at the cost of a disappointing story. With The Broker , I came away with a great education in Italian culture, cuisine and great insights into the oft-overlooked city of Bologna, Italy - but it was a thriller with precious few thrills. John Grisham The Broker is centers around Joe Blackman, a Washington, D.C. lobbyist that plays fast and loose with all of the rules and revels in throwing his weight all over town. Blackman is approached by Pakastani computer hackers who have discovered and hijacked a set of super high tech spy satellites with a special computer program. They want Blackman to sell...