Rogue Lawyer

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.

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.