The Racketeer

The Racketeer by John Grisham

John Grisham’s “The Racketeer” is one of those books where you really don’t understand everything that is going on until the last 25 or 30 pages of the story.  That’s not necessarily a bad thing, but in this case, the overall presentation of the story seems a bit awkward.  Even though most of your questions have been answered upon conclusion of the story, it doesn’t quite make up for the bizarre, queer feeling of confusion that stays with you for the majority of the tale.  There were times when I felt that Grisham originally had about three different story ideas, yet he couldn’t make any of them solid enough to stand on their own, so he ends up combining all three of them into one book.

Our main character is Malcolm Bannister.  At one time, Malcolm had a very nice, small town practice going as a lawyer.  He had a beautiful wife, and a beautiful young son, and life was moving along beautifully as well.  Unfortunately, when we meet Malcolm, he’s in a Federal Prison camp.  It seems he made some honest mistakes when dealing with a potential (crooked) client.  His client was high profile, so when the feds nabbed the crook, they nabbed everyone else they could find that did dealings with the man.  So when Malcolm is introduced to us, we hear all of those awful incarceration stories that Grisham seems to relish telling.  Malcolm is in a minimal security facility, so in many ways it seems more like a summer camp for bad boys.  There aren’t even fences around the perimeter.  But prison is prison, and even after a while, his loving supporting wife divorces him, and takes her son away from Malcolm to start a new life.  Also, Malcolm is black.  I only mention this because Grisham seems to mention this every few pages.

Well, on the outside in the free world, a major crime has been committed.  A federal judge has been slain along with his mistress, and the police have absolutely no leads.  Malcolm meets with the prison warden because, according to Malcolm, he knows who did it.  He makes a deal: He’ll tell the authorities who the killer is, in exchange for freedom in the witness protection program.  So eventually we now see Malcolm on the outside of prison.  We experience what life is like with a new identity.  Even though Malcolm is always looking over his shoulder, it sure is worth it.  Ah!  Freedom!

So then, about half-way through the book, the story makes an abrupt right turn off (what you think is) the main road, and takes you through a bizarre, strange labyrinth.  It seems as though Malcolm has some “unfinished business”, and he’s carefully constructing some sort of plan.  Again, the reader simply doesn’t know what’s going on.  It’s almost as if Grisham is asking us to just trust him, and eventually all will be revealed.  Well, again, everything is revealed, but the latter half of the book just isn’t as strong as the first part.

For example, in order for Malcolm’s “plan” to work, there are a few dozen details that are organized that must all exactly work in precise, meticulous fashion as they were designed.  If any of these details go slightly askew, the whole plan will tumble like a house of cards.  Of course, everything goes perfectly, so it all seems a bit unbelievable.  Also, for Malcolm’s plan to succeed, Grisham decides he needs an accomplice.  The problem is, where do you find an accomplice for Malcolm?  This man has no friends, no family, and a brand new identity to boot.  So the method in which the author brings this new character into the story seems ridiculously unbelievable.   Then there’s a part about Malcolm getting plastic surgery when he goes into the protection program which, in this story, makes him “totally unrecognizable” because, well, “all black people look alike”.  I found this to be flat out condescending.

Still, Grisham is Grisham, and the pages still turned at a rapid pace for me.  Sadly, though, this wasn’t one of his better ones, and I found the book overall to be “passable”, but not much more.