John Grisham either had an excellent few years when he was practising law during which he kept his eyes wide open or he is privy to a lot of insider information or he has a rich imagination. Possibly all three! The King of Torts is an excellent book right up until the end when it seems to have been concluded in a hurry. In any case, if you're looking for a good read to fill a few entertaining hours, read this one.

Clogs to clogs in three is an oft trotted out motto of a ne'er do well/ne'er do well family. The main character of this book, Clay, starts small, gets big and ends up in the mire. He also starts off with a woman and despite the vagaries of a lot of coming and going, ends up with the same woman.

Clay is a lawyer, a public defence lawyer who is CV building by defending those cases that a proper lawyer wouldn't touch with a barge pole. In this case he was sitting around in Court when he was spotted and ended up defending a poor unfortunate junkie, good for nothing who murdered someone. Clearly the man, hideously named Tequila, needed defending.

Clay was honest but going nowhere. His father had also been a lawyer but had been run out of town and was now the cap'n of a boat in the Caribbean: charters for rich city slickers and so on.

Clay was dating a pretty young thing and had been for years. Her father was a ne'er do well with connections and was always on the make. Clay wasn't good enough for his daughter! Fairly early into the book, this relationship foundered and without much further adieu she was married to someone whom the parents found suitable.

In parallel Clay was contacted by someone who handed Clay a tip that would make both of them a fortune. Clay would earn in excess of $100 million in the space of around a year as a result of that assignation. How could that be? The answer is the class action: where many people all band together to sue a company for some kind of problem. In this case it was to do with a drug that did some good things but then inexplicably did something really bad to a relatively significant number of people. Making them commit murder, for example.

Clay entered shark infested waters so to speak now as other class action lawyers (the sharks) got wind of what Clay was doing. They had tried to do the same as Clay but couldn't make it stick. Clay had inside information that they didn't, though.

Clay's contact makes him set up a swanky office, hire lots of legal and paralegal staff to get the show on the road. Clay remains loyal to some of his former colleagues at the public defence office and they do very well out of it: they all retire within a year or less!

The sharks all own private jets, Clay buys one; they own yachts, Clay buys one; they own houses on islands in the Caribbean, Clay buys one. So it goes on with Clay turning into a typical class action hustler chasing the enormous fees that seem to be available in real life as well as in this novel.

Along the way now Clay picks up a model: a Georgian (as in Tbilisi) lady with a figure that men drool over. She's called Ridley but the surname that Grisham gives her is far from being typically Georgian (it doesn't end with vili or idze, adze or zaghe or anything like it. Sorry, I didn't make a note of what it is and can't remember but it's not that Georgian.

Ridley turns heads is a companion of sorts but they never fully commit to each other. Eventually, as Clay has so much money, she gets into the habit of stopping her modelling career and moving full time into a shopping, spending and being idle career. There is the merest hint that she leaves Clay for extended periods to be with someone else; and Clay knows when he meets her that her companion could equally well be male and female. He's not bothered.

The original girlfriend, Rebecca, is always on his mind too: even to the extent that Clay gate crashes her wedding, taking Ridley along with him. They are ejected!

The high roller becomes further embroiled with the sharks. Gets as greedy as the sharks. Fails to realise when he might usefully retire. Gets caught out when things start to fall apart. As the story winds down, Clay is down to his last $20 million and that won't be enough, he thinks, to cover his impending losses.

Clay receives a call to meet someone in an hotel and as he is walking there he is beaten very badly by two men, probably from the cement company that Clay has effectively closed down in his search for ever more fees.

Rebecca's comes to call and she and Ridley meet. No fireworks but it serves to drive Ridley away and Rebecca much closer. Rebecca gets divorced fairly quickly after that.

You're up to the end now and I won't spoil it although you can probably see where it is heading!

There is an Englishman in the story for a very brief time and he is not nice. Then a Scotsman arrives and he's an oddball too.

The way this story is written, we are strongly made to believe that the sharks are actually worse than sharks: greedy, avaricious, eating far too much, needing to be brought down. We are also made to feel a great deal of sympathy for the victims, sorry the clients. From this point of view, if you are interested in anything to do with the American law sector and class actions in particular, I recommend this book.

This is a well written and well constructed story and it kept my interest throughout: like every Grisham novel I have read (I think I've only got one more to go!)

Duncan Williamson
14th October 2006