Search - The Appeal

I'm not sure that John Grisham is still the author that he once started out to be with his first several books. I found this book to be rather hard to keep track of all the different characters that are incorporated into the store telling. It did keep me going till about the last one-third of the book. I finally got through it, but makes me want to look at his writings in more detail the next time he comes out with another book.

Overall, I liked this book although it left bitter and scary feeling in me at the end. It was a very timely reading after all sorts of election campaign in 2008 and was definitely an interesting read for me as a non-American, who is less familiar with political and judicial issues (or corruption, I would say).

Although I couldn't relate much to characters in the book, how things evolved around the litigation was very, very interesting. It made me think how things in the (political) world really are happening and how many incidents are actually related under the surface. We really need to keep our eyes open and watch closely our surrounding events...

I heard there was actually similar real story in West Virginia, the 2004 election of Brent Benjamin to the state Supreme Court of Appeals. If you are interestd in, here is link with John Grisham's short interview. The article title is "John Grisham disses Blankenship, WV court" ==> http://www.wvoter-owned.org/news/2008/01_30a.html

Disappointed in the end

This was a very interesting book. I was fascinated by the amount of effort in characters to accomplish their task. It made me wonder if it was true to life. Grisham wrote it in such a realistic style that it makes a believer out of the reader. Captivating story!

Excellent

This is typical Grisham... captures the interest from the start. While this story is fiction one can find many similarities to real life.

After finishing the book I picked up the newspaper and read an article (excerpts & summary follow) about Massey Energy the nations 6th largest coal company located in W Va and operator of The Upper Big Branch mine. Big Branch has a troubled safety record and was hit with $900,000 in federal fines in 2009. for 500 alleged safety violations according to Labor Dept records.

Massey CEO lost a $50 Million verdict in a fraud lawsuit and spent $3 million to help elect a state appellate judge who ended up casting a crucial vote to overturn the verdict against Massey. The CEO has donated $50,200 to federal candidates since 1989 and people associated w/ Massey and it's PAC have donated $307,000 to federal political candidates since 1990.

The above resulted in a US Supreme Court dispute that tested the effect of campaign donations in judicial elections. The high court said "a judge must pull out of a case when a serious risk of actual bias arises". Now if we could just get the court to do the same with political contributions and bias!!!

This one will get you thinking about what really goes on behind the scenes in our political and justice system.