Book Review: The Appeal

Gene Warner - Buffalo News

Mar 06, 2008

The Appeal

By John Grisham

Doubleday

358 pages, $27.95

John Grisham is in a good place, right back where we want him.

Back in the fiction aisle, with his two-word book titles.

Back in his home state of Mississippi.

And, most importantly, back as a fly on the wall of our nation's legal system -- complete with its many warts, heroes and villains.

This one is called "The Appeal." Once again, Grisham has woven an intricate and creative plot that keeps you turning the pages, rooting for the white hats against the black hats in a novel that focuses on the way a judicial election can be bought by corporate bigwigs -- the guys with yachts, private jets and $100 bills oozing from every pore.

Nobody does corporate, political and legal sleaze better.

Grisham has stepped away from the plate for a while, writing a nonfiction book and two novels set in Italy, one a delightful story about an Italian football player, the other tweaking the Grisham formula with a book dominated by espionage and CIA agents.

Those who want the author to return to his more familiar roots have been waiting for the vintage Grisham.

Now he's back.

This book barely steps into the courtroom, as Grisham starts with the verdict in a civil case. The town of Bowmore, Miss., has been devastated by a chemical company that has polluted the municipal water supply, sending cancer rates skyrocketing.

The water's so polluted that it has incendiary effects in fighting fires, and it causes tiny cracks in automobile paint after a few car washes. The cancer rate is 15 times the national average, earning the county the dubious title of Cancer County, USA.

The polluter, Krane Chemical Co., is going down in the courtroom, as Grisham begins his tale.

"The jury was ready. After 42 hours of deliberations that followed 71 days of trial that included 530 hours of testimony from four dozen witnesses, and after a lifetime of sitting silently as the lawyers haggled and the judge lectured and the spectators watched like hawks for telltale signs, the jury was ready... Their ordeal was over; their civic duty complete. They had served above and beyond. They were ready."

Ready to nail the company, in a stunning $41 million verdict for a woman who lost both her husband and young son to cancer. Then, of course, comes the appeal, set for an almost evenly split Mississippi Supreme Court.

But the wily Krane Co. CEO, Carl Trudeau, won't go down without a fight. As he tells one of his lackeys, "Not one dime of our hard- earned profits will ever get into the hands of those trailer park peasants."

Let's put a black hat on this character.

Trudeau, through an untraceable "consulting" firm, spends millions on "litigation insurance." In other words, these shady operators attempt to buy themselves a new state Supreme Court judge, one wholly committed to limiting liability in civil lawsuits.

They find their candidate, Ron Fisk, a values-spouting young devout Christian attorney, launching a campaign that spares not a dime and targets all the easy issues it can create, attracting voters who are "for God and guns and against gays and liberals."

To Grisham's credit, Fisk sees a bit more gray than his handlers, setting up some plot twists and turns after he experiences some heartache in his own life. High marks to Grisham here.

Where the author shines is in skewering the masters of excess along our legal, political and business landscapes. There's little subtlety here. Grisham leaves no doubt about his feelings about influence-buying and -peddling in today's judicial races in America.

One level-headed judge, speaking for Grisham, suggests how the system can be repaired: "Either take away the private money and finance the races with public funds or switch to appointments. Eleven other states have figured out how to make the appointment system work. I'm not sure their courts are vastly superior to ours in terms of legal talent, but at least the special interests don't control them."

Grisham does excess and caricature better than almost anyone.

There's the powerful Mississippi senator, Myers Rudd, whom Grisham tears apart in one simple passage:

"Senator Rudd didn't know and didn't care that he was owned by other people. He had over $11 million in the bank... In return for such an investment, Rudd had a perfect voting record on all matters dealing with pharmaceuticals, chemicals, oil, energy, insurance, banks, and on and on.

"But he was a man of the people."

On the other side, there's a small-town decency to the characters wearing the white hats here, including a debt-ridden husband-and- wife attorney team that wins the $41 million suit, aware that the big payoff may never occur.

The decent folks stay in character all the way through. The rogues may succeed in some of their game, but they have to answer to Grisham's sharpened barbs.

Welcome back, John.

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