This should have a higher rating. Grisham was so close to nailing this one that it's really pretty frustrating. I liked the book, but I should have liked it a lot more, except for a few issues that downgraded the whole affair for me.

1. The story resolves itself too rapidly for my tastes. It's one thing to start running things at a breakneck pace once all the players are in place and the action really starts to kick in to gear, another thing to just sort of draw things to a stop just as things are getting really interesting.

2. It feels like the last 5 or 6 chapters are just missing from the book. The mystery of who is responsible for pulling the strings is just left unresolved and too many other plot threads are just...stopped

I will say this, it's the first Grisham in a quite a while where the lead character doesn't become completely disillusioned with the law by the end of things, and plans to become a history teacher! So I had some decent hopes.

It's a fast read and really quite fun, but I think in Grisham's attempt at realism he left too much plot out. Barely hits the 3 stars, I'm probably being too generous...