August 17, 2015
Sebastian Rudd, the narrator of this uninspired legal thriller from bestseller Grisham (Gray Mountain), describes himself a “lone gunman, a rogue who fights the system and hates injustice.” Working in an unspecified Southern state, Rudd isn’t afraid to defend unpopular clients, starting with a “brain-damaged eighteen-year-old dropout” named Gardy, who’s charged with murdering two young girls. Since everyone is convinced of Gardy’s guilt, Rudd faces a tough slog in trying to spring him and nail the real killer. Frequent death threats force him to live a nomadic and isolated existence. His sole friend is his bodyguard and confidant, known only as Partner. Grisham tries to humanize Rudd by making him the backer of an up-and-coming mixed martial artist, as well as the father of a second grader raised by his ex-wife and her current female partner, but he’s more a stereotype than a full-blooded character. Some later plot developments, including the climactic jury trial, strain credibility. Agent: David Gernert, Gernert Company.

August 15, 2015
Another by-the-numbers legal procedural, at once gritty and lethargic, by longtime practitioner Grisham (Gray Mountain, 2014, etc.). "There are plenty of people who'd like to kill me right now," grumbles Sebastian Rudd, the rogue lawyer in question. He carries a gun, works out of his car, and sleeps in a different hotel room every week, precisely because he runs up against so many bad guys who mean him harm. Some of them are cops. Why? Because Sebastian, though jaded and cynical, as literary lawyers are required to be, apparently still believes in justice, for which reason, accompanied by a bodyguard named Partner ("a hulking, heavily armed guy who wears black suits and takes me everywhere"), he finds himself in a podunk burg where a client is fighting for his life against the charge that he's brutally murdered two little girls in a spectacularly gruesome crime. Natch, spectacular gruesomeness being another sine qua non for the bestselling crime novel. Indirection and misdirection abound, with lots of talky exposition, the requisite maverick-y norm-flouting ("At this precise moment, I am violating the rules of ethics and perhaps a criminal statute as well"), and the usual sarcastic world-weariness ("The jurors don't believe any of this because they have known for some time that Gardy was a member of a satanic cult with a history of sexual perversion"). All this is to be expected in a genre bound by convention as tightly as our perp bound the ankles of his victims, but the reader can see most of the mystery coming from a long way off, making the yarn less effective than most. And the cliches pile on a bit too thickly, from the large-breasted moll to the bored judge who dozes at the bench. One wonders if Grisham weren't sleeping through some of this as well. Whatever the case, one of his lesser cases.

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September 15, 2015
There comes a moment in this book when the reader is likely to think: Ah, now I see what he's doing. At first, the novel appears to be a series of tenuously related episodes in the life of defense attorney Sebastian Rudd, who operates his practice out of a customized van and who actively seeks out big cases and doesn't shy away from the media or from breaking the occasional rule. The cases include the murders of two girls; a man on trial for shooting a police officer (during a raid on the man's house); the abduction of a pregnant woman; and a prison break. They feel, at first, like stand-alone stories, but at some point past the halfway mark, they begin to link up, and we realize that Grisham is trying to show us the fabric of Rudd's working lifechaotic, unpredictable, with several cases going on at the same time. Rudd shares some literary DNA with Michael Connelly's Mickey Haller (the Lincoln Lawyer), but Grisham's hero is no rip-off. Rudd is a complex, compelling character, who, we hope, will appear again and again. HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: The Grisham name, of course, is all that's needed to ensure an audience, but this time he delivers a quality thriller to go with the brand.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2015, American Library Association.)

September 1, 2015
In his latest, Grisham introduces Sebastian Rudd, a renegade street lawyer with an unconventional yet right-minded approach toward advocating for the powerless. Rudd's cases involve social misfits--all wrongfully accused. There's the drug-addled sexual pervert from a satanic cult, wanted for molesting and drowning two little girls; a Mafia mobster on death row, charged with killing a judge; and a retired homeowner, falsely suspected of drug trafficking and accused of shooting at a SWAT team invading his home. Loathing the legal system and his town's redneck citizens, Rudd intimidates both the local police and judges when seeking a reprieve or dismissal of a case. He also passes choice tidbits to reporters to generate support. However, his most difficult legal battle is with his estranged wife who's waging an ongoing battle to end visitation rights with their young son. VERDICT Grisham devotees will enjoy a compelling and convincing plot propelled by a memorable protagonist who constantly defends his roguish actions and justifies his unconventional behavior. [See Prepub Alert, 4/27/15.]--Jerry P. Miller. Cambridge, MA

Copyright 2015 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

May 15, 2015

No word on plot, character, or setting here. My closest guess on mood, given the title? In The Appeal, Grisham says, "Trial lawyers, always a colorful and eclectic bunch. Cowboys, rogues, radicals, longhairs, corporate suits, flamboyant mavericks.... They were anything but boring." Expect not to be bored.

Copyright 2015 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

September 1, 2015

In his latest, Grisham introduces Sebastian Rudd, a renegade street lawyer with an unconventional yet right-minded approach toward advocating for the powerless. Rudd's cases involve social misfits--all wrongfully accused. There's the drug-addled sexual pervert from a satanic cult, wanted for molesting and drowning two little girls; a Mafia mobster on death row, charged with killing a judge; and a retired homeowner, falsely suspected of drug trafficking and accused of shooting at a SWAT team invading his home. Loathing the legal system and his town's redneck citizens, Rudd intimidates both the local police and judges when seeking a reprieve or dismissal of a case. He also passes choice tidbits to reporters to generate support. However, his most difficult legal battle is with his estranged wife who's waging an ongoing battle to end visitation rights with their young son. VERDICT Grisham devotees will enjoy a compelling and convincing plot propelled by a memorable protagonist who constantly defends his roguish actions and justifies his unconventional behavior. [See Prepub Alert, 4/27/15.]--Jerry P. Miller. Cambridge, MA

Copyright 2015 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

February 29, 2016
Grisham’s antihero defense attorney, Sebastian Rand, who narrates this novel, handles cases no other lawyer would touch with a 10-foot habeas corpus. More obsessed by justice than legal process or friendship or social amenities, he bends the law to its breaking point, keeps to himself, and travels in a custom-built bulletproof van driven by a mainly silent ex-client he calls Partner. He’s cold, contemptuous, and hard to like. Reader Deakins doesn’t ignore this, but includes a smidgen more humanity than the author has put on the page, a welcome addition—not that his version of the lawyer is warm and fuzzy. Rand, after all, is dealing with a broken judicial system, described by Grisham with an insider’s knowledge and read with eye-opening clarity by Deakins. He also adds an aural sense of continuity to a work that is more a collection of cases, won or lost, than a fully constructed novel. A Doubleday hardcover.