The Judge's List

 

The Judge’s List – by John Grisham

As I’ve stated in my many other reviews of Grisham’s work, his main appeal is that he has a captivating writing style.  He hooks you in. You rarely get bored, and his observations of common human behavior often come across as quite amusing.  It’s not easy to keep your audience entertained for a long period of time. So regardless of whether or not you enjoy the particular story he’s telling, it’s always enjoyable to read what he has to say, and the chapters always seem to fly by.  It’s easy to read a 400-page Grisham book in the span of only one weekend.

This book is sort of a sequel to Grisham’s “The Whistler”. I remember very little about that story (Grisham’s tales don’t stay in one’s memory for very long) other than I did enjoy it.  Thankfully I can say I liked this one as well. I enjoyed this one overall despite some minor flaws.  The story revolves around Lacy Stoltz who works on the fictitious Florida Board on Judicial Conduct.  The main task of this entity is to review complaints against judges by those who feel somehow cheated by these pursuers of justice.

This is not an exciting job. Most complaints are ridiculous, and the serious ones aren’t that interesting. It doesn’t help when Lacy’s department is affected by drastic budget cuts.  When we read about Lacy in her office, we can almost see the outdated furniture, the shoddy carpeting, and we can taste the stale coffee.  Well, the boredom is about to change when a complaint comes across Lacy’s desk (so to speak) about a judge who is believed to have committed murder. Several actually. Murder?? A judge??

So into action we go. Overall I enjoyed how Grisham told the story.  A lot of the tale is told through the eyes of the actual murderer and how he’s able to conceal so many of his crimes. We enjoy reading the parts of the story from his point of view as opposed to Lacy’s.  Still, I can’t help but wonder if there were slight things about this novel that could have been better.  At times we read about Lacy and others who have “lunch” or “meet” with relatives for no other reason than to pad the book a bit.  When we read about Lacy’s obnoxious brother Gunther, his portrayal seemed a bit silly and contrived.  Then, of course, since Lacy is divorced and approaching 40, there’s a bit of a romantic diversion here as well. She has a boyfriend. Neither of them seriously love each other, but they stay together (I guess) because it’s nice to have someone around and neither fancy the prospect of growing old alone.  This side story leaves the door open for more “Lacy Stoltz” novels.  Not a bad thing really.  It just tended to divert a bit much from the story.

Also there’s the fact that I always question how things go down when I read suspense books such as this, and how realistic or unrealistic the event is portrayed. Example: When there are multiple murders committed over a relatively short period of time in a relatively small area of the country with the exact same murder weapon, wouldn’t this raise a lot of questions? Sure, Grisham educates us that most murders never get solved, but it seems that in this case a lot more eyes would be open to such circumstances. Another Example: I can believe that a criminal can hack into a hotel’s security system and unlock every guest’s door on the premise, but don’t most people in a hotel also use a deadbolt when they’re in the room?  Especially when they sleep?  And are already paranoid about being chased by a killer?   Anyway.

Since Grisham highly saturates the book market with at least two books per year, it becomes hard to really appreciate any of his novels as “top-notch”.  People felt that way about his first several novels, but once the conveyor belt started speeding up, his books became more of a pleasant diversion as opposed stellar works of fiction.   I’ll probably continue to read his books until he (or I) dies, and the man does succeed more than he fails. Even though his best stories may only grade about a “B”, his writing style and method has always been, and probably always will be, an “A+”.