Don't be put off by the legalese in the title: Grisham's latest is another pedal-to-the-metal crowd-pleaser. The bestselling author uses his 15th book as a platform to tsk-tsk lawyers who bring class-action suits—ambulance chasers in Armani. This is a rags-to-riches-to-rags tale in which hero and villain are one and the same.
Clay Carter is a sad-sack public defender in Washington, D.C., whose girlfriend has grown weary of his thin wallet. Enter Max Pace, a shady corporate fixer who offers Clay $15 million to cover up the misdeeds of a nefarious pharmaceutical firm.
Clay takes the cash and sets up his own practice, which uses more of Max's dirty secrets to sue corporations. Clay gets rich and rewards himself with a private jet and a Russian model. But the greedier he gets, the worse he treats his clients, working-class folks who have suffered both physically and—thanks to Clay's huge fees—financially. It's not spoiling anything to say that Max is duplicitous and that Clay doesn't get to keep his shiny plane. Although Grisham can be preachy, he devises a complex finale and takes a clever poke at our litigious society. (Doubleday, $27.95)
BOTTOM LINE: Rousing morality play
By Deborah Joy Corey
Elizabeth Johnson is a familiar type: a lost teenager who, searching for a father figure, falls for a charismatic older man. He in turn stomps on her heart, almost with her permission. But Corey anchors her girl-done-wrong story with a perfectly realized setting (a tiny island village off the coast of Maine) and protagonist. Elizabeth's matter-of-fact views mask confusion and pain when her family, already fragile, comes unglued after her mother is hit in the face with a hockey puck while ice-skating. After her fling with the older man, a married architect, Elizabeth befriends the boy who shot the errant puck. He's carrying around some heavy baggage of his own. Stories like these usually lead to salvation, but it isn't obvious that Elizabeth will get it: She follows every sensible decision with an awful one. Her complexity could easily sustain another book. (Berkley, $21.95)
BOTTOM LINE: Frozen treat
By Jane Ellen Wayne
There are lots of juicy tidbits but too many factual and stylistic pits in these 15 chapters, one each for such movie divas as Greta Garbo, Elizabeth Taylor, Ava Gardner and Grace Kelly.
Garbo was bisexual. Gardner bragged about then husband Frank Sinatra's genital size. Taylor was called "My Little Heifer" by her onetime husband Sen. John Warner. Veteran star biographer Wayne breathlessly repeats such lore but rarely credits her sources. And the editing is woeful: The book gives monetary amounts in both pounds and dollars and apparently mistakes The Shop Around the Corner's Margaret Sullavan for Maureen O'Sullivan (Tarzan's Jane and Mia Farrow's mom). Wayne compounds the error by referring to O'Sullivan as Sullivan. (Carroll & Graf, $26)
BOTTOM LINE: Lots of dish, but poorly served
Page-turner of the week
By Elizabeth Buchan
[
Forty-eight-year-old Rose Lloyd's pleasant life takes a nasty turn when her previously predictable husband, Nathan, leaves her for Minty, 29, previously Rose's friend. Meanwhile Minty, who met Nathan when Rose brought her home to dinner, slithers into Rose's job as books editor for a London newspaper, and Nathan wants to buy Rose out of their home so he and Minty will have room for their own brood. Murderous revenge looks tempting, but Rose, who loses weight and connects with an ex-lover, finds subtler ways to fight back. Buchan handles Rose's plight with insight and credibility. Middle-aged or not, readers will find this book funny and sad, serious and light. (Viking, $24.95)
BOTTOM LINE: Get Revenge
By Hunter S. Thompson
Writers should use fun words, but getting them in the right order is just as important. Dr. Gonzo's sort-of memoir, a blurry hash of unlikely adventures usually involving shooting, shouting, and getting naked, drunk or arrested, is essentially Jackass with a thesaurus. Some episodes are funny (Thompson leaves a bleeding elk heart on his pal Jack Nicholson's doorstep while blasting a tape of "a pig being eaten alive by bears"), and Thompson's style still gleams darkly: "Things are no longer what they seem to be. My telephones are haunted, and animals whisper at me from unseen places." But the plausible tales are familiar, the made-up ones are just silly, and Thompson's politics may seem a tad facile to those who don't believe President Bush is a Nazi. Much of this is just bull in search of a china shop. Thompson could have been Tom Wolfe, but he settled for tomfoolery. (Simon and Schuster, $25)
BOTTOM LINE: Old dog, old tricks
- Contributors:
- Sean Daly,
- Debby Waldman,
- Leah Rozen,
- Annette Gallagher Weisman,
- Kyle Smith.
Saved by the Bell Reunion
The hookups, the meltdowns, the memoires
The case reveals what was really going on what they think of each other now!
