The King Of Torts

..By ‘John Grisham’ is if nothing else, enlightening. What I mean is that, I have learn’t a whole lotta legal jargon, which if I hadn’t read the book, I wouldn’t have ever. Like for eg., well ‘tort’. Though it is ‘legal breach’ as per the dictionary, here it means mass settlement, so I suppose the title becomes ‘The King of Mass Settlement’, doesn’t have the same ring does it? Hence, that’s why, I suppose Grisham used King of ‘Torts’. So, the story begins with our hero who is depressed & struggling and aged 31. Age, important? Very. My interest actually went up a couple of notches when I came upon this very relevant info. It basically signified(to moa) that I had a whole 6 yrs to strike gold & become obscenely rich or rather that I had a whole 6 yrs of struggle infront of me(?)…..


Hmm…whatever, the age was definitely an interesting point of consideration. Right, so after the revelation of JCC-II(J. Clay Carter-II, our hero’s) age, he suddenly becomes rich. How? Well, he receives some inside info on a certain case he is working on & makes the most of it. But..he does so at the price of his ethics & as we all have learn’t , in the world of fiction , that this aint good. What our chap does is really this:


He comes to know (throu’ his secret source) that a certain medicine is harmful to people. So, he advertises this fact, gets their cases and then settles with the company, which is not really bad. What is , is that, he skims off a major portion of the settlement & gives his numerous clients a very small share. This is called ‘mass settlement’.


A couple of twists n turns later his bad karma catches up with him.


But what I found really infuriating was the open ending. I have nothing against them, but JG doesn’t even bother to take the effort to clarify certain important points. Its almost as if he is hoping to do a da vince & wants to write a sequel(or prequel).


But, there’s always one thing about Grisham’s books, you invariably have a good time when u’r readin’ ‘em.


[No. of pages:372]