Somewhere back in the ancient mists of time, I vaguely remember reading one of John Grisham's early best sellers. I couldn't tell you which one it was at this point. Suffice it to say that it couldn't have made that much of an impression on me if it's taken me this long to get around to reading another one, The Racketeer (#286). It's probably safe to say that it will take me an equally long period of time to get around to reading another one.
The eponymous racketeer of the title is small town attorney Malcolm Baldwin, who has wound up in a federal prison for innocently taking on the wrong anonymous client for a simple real estate transaction at exactly the wrong time, just as the government was closing in on that client with a host of RICOH charges, busily sweeping up anyone who had done business with him in its net. Malcolm has done five years of his sentence, losing home, family and his career, when a federal judge is murdered in Virginia. Malcolm finally has his literal "get out of prison" card since he knows who killed the judge and why.
I know several of my friends raved about this book, but although it was entertaining enough to keep me occupied on a plane, I will admit to feeling manipulated by the author as pertinent facts were deliberately concealed from the reader in such an obvious way that it was not possible to reasonably guess the outcome. Of course then the book could have been a hundred pages shorter and nobody would have noticed. But that's probably just me. Grisham's a perennial best seller. The mystery here for me is "Why?"
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