John Grisham:  don't dismiss him before you try his new book, Rogue Lawyer

Sebastian Rudd is an unconventional criminal defense attorney.  After having his office fire-bombed, he now operates out of a luxury van complete with work station, leather chairs, a bar and an armory.  He has no work associates other than his driver/assistant/caddy, Partner, and he lives on the 25^th floor of a high rise where he feels safe from those who would seek retribution for a verdict they didn’t like.  These living/working aspects of his life are a clue to the kind of people he usually defends.  He has an acrimonious relationship with Judith, the mother of his child, who is regularly taking him to court to strip him of any visiting rights.  While Rudd is not father material exactly, a fact that he readily admits, he does want a relationship with his son, and this battle continues in the background of various cases in which he is involved throughout the novel, featuring more prominently at one point when his son is kidnapped.  Unlike with most detective fiction, Grisham’s past work included, Rudd juggles several cases at a time and the story has several arcs rather than focusing on just one case – a feature that I liked because it seems more realistic and more interesting.  There’s a whole cast of characters who march through the courtroom:  a drug-addicted, tattooed teenager falsely accused of killing two little girls; a man who is a victim of a botched police home invasion; a death-row criminal who arranges for the murder of a judge; and a young cage fighter who kills a referee in the ring when the fight doesn’t go his way. 

In Rudd, Grisham creates a character who is occasionally unlikeable but who is ultimately sympathetic because his higher moral instincts take over when needed.  While he is willing to take on clients who, in his words, are usually guilty, he both believes that they have a right to a good attorney and he is often paid handsomely by these people.  Grisham uses Rudd as a way to criticize everything from big banks, insurance companies and, most importantly, the judicial system, giving voice to, for example, his clear criticism of a system that  professes to assume innocence but that more often presumes guilt.  The police department in the book’s unnamed city is a hotbed of corruption and Grisham presents pay offs and cover-ups as part of a system that skews justice.  Rudd will bend the rules himself but only if he thinks there is no other way to protect the innocent.

Grisham may be seen as a writer of thrillers that one takes to the beach – and that characterization isn’t entirely wrong – but the quality of his writing has gradually evolved and a reader can appreciate him on multiple levels.  In the past few years, he has tackled hot button issues, revealing their complexities, while creating strong, memorable characters.  Take him to the beach when you pack your bags this summer; you won’t be sorry.

Two Recent Reads

I recently finished two good novels that, on the surface, have little in common, but which actually share some similar aspects.  The Life We Bury by Allen Eskens is told in the voice of college student Joe Talbert, for whom every day is a battle of sorts.  He works two jobs to put himself through school and pay his rent, with little real time for anything else except studying; however, his alcoholic mother calls when she periodically lands herself in jail or wants to go off for a wild weekend with her latest man, leaving Joe to care for his autistic younger brother, which just about puts Joe over the edge.  These events get sidelined in the plot when Joe reaches out to a local nursing home for a subject for his English class biography assignment.  He meets Carl Iverson, a man who has been released from prison to die there from the cancer that is eating him up.  Carl, it turns out, is a convicted murderer, who wants to tell his story – and proclaim his innocence – to Joe.  Much of the rest of the book is Joe’s investigation of the events and the people who sent Carl to prison.  Joe investigates with a fellow student, neighbor and eventual love interest, Lily, while juggling his other issues.

Trapeze by Simon Mawer  tells the story of Marion Sutro, a 19 year old British girl who is a native French speaker, thanks to her French mother.  It is WWII and, because of her linguistic abilities, she is recruited by the Special Operations branch of the British government for training as an agent to support the resistance movement.  After significant training, she is dropped into the French countryside where she assumes a new identity and becomes a courier.  A secondary mission involves reconnecting with an old family friend, a French physicist, whom the British want to recruit to come and help them develop a bomb.  Her mission is complicated by her girlhood crush on the physicist, a man 10 years her senior, and by a friendship with another agent whom she befriended during her training.

Although the books seem a world apart, there is the idea of shifting identities in both.  Carl is known to the world as the rapist/murderer of the young girl who lived next door to him.  To his old war buddy, he a decorated veteran, an ethical man who would never have done the crime for which he was convicted.  To Joe, he is, initially, a dying, old man who provides raw material for an assignment.  Who is Carl, really?  As Trapeze begins, Marian is a fairly innocent young girl who sees her recruitment as an adventure.  Once in training, she is renamed Anne Marie; the persona she assumes in France is Alice, and by the end of the book, she takes yet another identity.  While name changes are superficial, the roles that she inhabits are not.  With each comes both an invented background and a wiser and more mature Marian.  As she looks back at the girl she once was, she constantly asks herself, “Who am I now?”

Another common element these novels share is a main character who is naïve to the danger that comes with the path s/he has chosen.  Marian is caught up in the romance of being a spy.  Even though the training she does is rigorous, the whole experience remains an exciting adventure.  Bolstered by the ease with which she maneuvers around the south of France, she is unprepared for Nazi-occupied Paris and the threats it presents.  Over-confidence becomes a liability.  Joe, in The Life We Bury, loses track of the reason he is meeting with Carl and becomes caught up in an investigation of the past to determine Carl’s true involvement (or lack thereof) in the crime.  He blunders forward, becoming obsessed with finding out the truth, with little regard for the fact that there are those who would prefer to leave the past alone. 

The Life We Bury is a solid 3-stars; if you like mysteries, it’s a good, quick read.  The family problems that Joe experiences seem, at times, like an unnecessary complication, and the sometimes ease with which he is able to discover old information is a little surprising, but I still recommend the book.  I listened to Trapeze (an audio download from the library), and, of course, hearing the novel is a different reading experience, but I thought it was well written, with a strong narrative voice and a plot that had momentum.  I was pleasantly surprised that Mawer so capably inhabited the voice of a woman.  I was also pleased to learn that there is a sequel that is already on my amazon wish list.