The Litigators by John Grisham.
The Legal Thriller is my favorite genre. There is nothing more interesting than watching lawyers battling and out witting each other in the court room or sometimes outside court room. It is better than war fought with weapons. It is the battle where words are used as weapons. I have been long-term Grisham fan since he specializes in Legal thrillers. Well actually not thrillers. When I read his Novels I always felt that theme Thriller always lacks in his novels. His novel stands more as matter of fact tone. He wrote story involving the legal battle without much twist and turns that we normally expect from thrillers. That’s really what I actually love in his novels. We feel as if the case is happening in real world and Grisham is doing the job of reporting to us. It has become his trade mark. The Litigators falls in same genre with same trade mark writing.
The Litigators is the story of Law firm Finley & Figg. It is about their partners Oscar Finley & Wally Figg. It is about America’s law system, but mainly it is the story of David Zinc and his journey as street Lawyer. The Harvard Graduate has audacity to snub the one of the country’s biggest law firm Rogan Rothberg job. The high paying job brought some anxiety attacks on David which made him realize that leaving the job is the best thing he can do. After few drinks in bar he comically reached the firm of Finley & Figg and demanded opportunity to work with them. The firm was mostly involved in low paying divorce cases or DUI cases or sometimes automobile accident.
They were struggling and no need of another employee, but David persuaded them by accepting low payment against opportunity to work with them. The firm would do better with educated lawyer, my personal thoughts. With this began the journey of David, as his early struggle to understand the working of Law system is shown. For David it was everything new. The working ways were new, the judge jokes shamelessly with Lawyers, where ethics and professionalism were least valued. The David soon found himself in situations where lawyer carries guns and have to lie greatly to get some work.
The Story continues with Figg getting new high-profile case against Varrick Labs. The character of Figg is very much like man who desperate to become entrepreneur but lacks necessary skills. He brings the cases which he thought would change their life. He always woke with the dream of being rich and finds shortcuts to become one. The case against Varrick labs is one of these cases. While the Character of Oscar Finley is somewhat opposite that of Figg. He is unhappily married person who is desperate for divorce but had no idea how to get one and the irony is that he is Divorce lawyer. He was tired of Figg’s occasional burst of ideas to become rich and which fade with bad ending. The case against Varrick gave same instincts to Finley but Figg was no listener and decides to use the case to become rich.
The case was pretty simple; Varrick produces the medicine Krayoxx which was prescribed to obese patients. Figg was of the view that Krayoxx is causing the death of people using it. So his big idea was to find the people who were using Krayoxx in the past and which are dead now. He was trying to correlate death with the Krayoxx but there was small problem to it. The problem was that there was no proof of such happening, that the drug is bad. The Figg never consider checking reliability of his sources or testing the medicine before filing the case. Figg and other big guns involved in the case were of the view that Varrick will try to settle the case outside the court and will make them milliner, but alas nothing such happens and case was lead to trail. Nobody in Finley & figg including David knew about facing the jury. They were as good as virgin in trials.
David is shown as good person and lovely husband. He pities the poor and fights some cases for them. The goodness in his nature brought David close to Burmese Immigrates, which leads him handling the case of lead poisoning brain damage. With two cases going parallel to each other we get the lot of legal battle to enjoy.
I have no idea how real Law system works but as far as I have seen Grisham do great job of mixing the legal battle with fiction. He has brought the real face of legal system as close as possible with his entertaining story and the Litigators is no exception. The novel is fast paced with lot of humor and legal battle to make it the complete page tuner. The other legal battles which come close to Grisham were in Novels of Sidney Sheldon or Jeffrey Archer’s.

Rating :- **** 4 /5