Books: The Appeal

The Appeal. John Grisham. American legal fiction.

The background is straight out of the Love Canal environmental disaster that became apparent in the 1970s, but brought modern.

A community nicknamed 'Cancer County' because of the effects of reckless waste management by big industry in the locality.

A lawsuit which resulted in a $41m verdict in favour of a widow and bereaved mother, thanks to the efforts beyond the call of duty of a small husband and wife law firm, efforts which brought the firm itself to the brink of bankruptcy and beyond.

The verdict gave the community hope. Even if the corporation that lost would appeal the decision to the Supreme Court of Mississipi. But hope and corporate money makes for a tough fight. Especially when the corporation enlists the aid of a company that can 'buy' an elected seat on that Supreme Court.

As always, Grisham writes a taut and compelling tale. His own legal and state legislature background founds well his narrative in its legality, but his writing gift is making it understandable even to us far from the American Way of Justice.

He has a deft way of drawing his characters, which is maybe a bit too clinical for some. We never get too deep into their psyches, but we have just enough detail to emphatise. Or dislike, if that's what is needed.

In 'The Appeal', John Grisham's 20th novel, we follow zeniths and nadirs in the timelines of the main protaganists through the story. We get to feel for the underdogs and to abhor, though with a certain sense of growing despair that there is really any justice, the 'black hats' of corporation in the midst of ordinary people.

As I read it, and knowing the extent of such corporative evil in the much more serious matter of the Iraq war, for instance, I could establish parallels that would scare anyone who doesn't want to know such things.

In this, the story of 'The Appeal' set in a small community could be a metaphor for what's happening between America and the rest of the world. I'm not saying that Grisham was thinking this way when he wrote this one.

But if the notion is carried through, the ending of this particular piece of fiction is one that is definitely worth some thought.

Recommended. But I might be on a judicial panel where the dissenters haven't been bought. BB