The Runaway Jury in Around the World in 80 Books

Oct 29, 2013 Bogdan rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: new-world

Hm, it is hard for me to have a clear opinion about it at this point. I am having mixed feelings about it. I liked the trial details as they seem to be very real. John Grisham, in the end it worked as a lawyer and has for sure first hand impressions about it. But everything else that was beyond the courtroom, seemed so artificial and forced, like in the '80s spy novels. This is why I am torn between these two opposing feelings. I also saw the movie some years ago, but I did not remembered too mu Hm, it is hard for me to have a clear opinion about it at this point. I am having mixed feelings about it. I liked the trial details as they seem to be very real. John Grisham, in the end it worked as a lawyer and has for sure first hand impressions about it. But everything else that was beyond the courtroom, seemed so artificial and forced, like in the '80s spy novels. This is why I am torn between these two opposing feelings. I also saw the movie some years ago, but I did not remembered too much details before started reading. Especially, I did not remembered the plot resolution, which kept me reading with interest.

To crack this dilemma, I will take it one by one and analyze the novel in several aspects. First, the premise is quite good. I can resume it at "if you know your goal and you're smart and persistent, you'll win even if there are many odds against it". Not sure if I captured it correctly, but more or less this is it. Not too bad, in my opinion, but a little too particular. Perhaps the generalization I tried seems forced because the premise might be too particular and not applicable in many cases. Anyhow, it got one and this is an important aspect. I will give it a 3 for premise.

On the form element, I like the poetic justice used to end up the plot (Hollywood style ending). But apart from that, the novel is not excelling at anything. The style of John Grisham is pretty common for mainstream American novel. The ones with public success, like the ones written by Clive Cussler or Dan Brown. So I cannot rate it more than 2 at form.

In terms of originality, this is the first novel I have read from legal thriller genre. I saw several movies on the same genre, of course, but in terms of novels, it is a premiere for me. Secondly, I really enjoyed the details regarding jury type trials and especially US judicial system. Mostly because in my country we are using a juridic system inspired by the French one, that do not have juries. I will rate it with a 3, but I doubt that it will be the rating if I would have read few other legal thriller novels.

The characters are highly stereotypical and do not seem real, except for the jury members. It is clear that the author had seen many jurors from many social strata, so he knows how to portray them. But the rest of the main characters, Fitch, Marlee, Chairmen of Big 4 companies, even the judge, are all too simple and only a one trait characters. I did not liked this at all, so I will rate it with a 2.

Regarding the complexity and difficulty, I believe the novel is pretty simple, without too many complicated literary devices. Taking into account that John Grisham used his experience to document the most part of the novel, I believe it was pretty easy for him to write it, so I will rate it with a 1 for complexity and difficulty.

The last criteria is edition. I read a Kindle edition translated into Romanian, and the translation was pretty good for the most part. The main discrepancy was with the stock operations Marlee did that I suppose were explained not correctly translated. Perhaps the translator did not had the knowledge about stock exchange, as this was not so common in Romania, as in US. I will rate it for edition with a 4, as there were no other major issues.

To summarize, the novel was interesting, helping me to understand better the US juridical system. It also made me ask myself some questions about smoking, especially how I would vote if I would have been a juror. In the light of this novel, I was also comparing the EU decisions regarding smoking that specifically targeted several accusations from this trial. All in all, my final rating for the novel is 2.50, rounding it up to a 3 stars on Goodreads system.


+--------------------------+-----------------+
| Criteria | Rating |
+--------------------------+-----------------+
|Premise | 3 |
+--------------------------+-----------------+
|Form | 2 |
+--------------------------+-----------------+
|Originality | 3 |
+--------------------------+-----------------+
|Characters | 2 |
+--------------------------+-----------------+
|Difficulty/Complexity | 1 |
+--------------------------+-----------------+
|Edition | 4 |
+--------------------------+-----------------+
|Total | 2.50 |
+--------------------------+-----------------+