Racketeer: Fin! (Full Book Discussion)

[Andrew, Wound Up]

[Andrew, Wound Up]

***Open discussion of THE WHOLE BOOK below, no spoilers needed. Be sure you have finished the book before reading any further! Note: if this is your first visit to this topic I recommend you read this post about discussion ideas, then skip down and post your initial response, then read and respond to other people's posts.***

At the very least check in here when you finish and tell us if you enjoyed the novel. I'll post specific discussion ideas below, along with the general topics we've seen repeated throughout the book.

Full Book discussions:

1) In the author's note Grisham says Accuracy was not deemed crucial. Long paragraphs of fiction were used to avoid looking up facts. Do you think that this novel would have been improved if Grisham spent more time researching information?

2) What is your opinion of the ethicality of Malcolm's plot?

General Discussions:

1) Share your favorite quote(s) from the book.

2) Share your favorite word(s) from the book.

3) Who was your favorite or most intriguing character?


GO!

[Andrew, Wound Up]

I thought this book was split right down the middle. I really enjoyed it right up until Malcolm's flight from witness protection. Right at that point it went goofy. An unreliable narrator can be a fun twist but Grisham is heavy handed and does little to explain the narrative point of view.

Accuracy: I like Grisham, partly because there is often some sense that his plot is unrealistic but not completely implausible. The Racketeer abandoned all sense of "reality" and any legal system grounding that you might expect. After Malcolm goes off on his own (i.e. the 2nd half of the book) it is just a poorly conceived heist novel.

I won't put a whole laundry list of complaints here but one thing really stood out. Malcolm's faith that anyone would give him the time of day (and not just incarcerate him) after it was revealed that he had made everything up the first time. Also irritating is the idea that Quinn would be sprung free on the 2nd confession. He would still be serving time as an escapee and it was clear he was in cahoots with Malcolm.

Even worse, the same questionable part of the book becomes downright boring for huge sections.

Ethics?: No. Grisham is the champion of the underdog and antihero. It isn't OK to steal stolen goods (receiving stolen property). Torture is wrong (Devin's ordeal in the jail). Plotting to help people escape from prison. Getting freed from prison by giving false information. No. Bad Malcolm.

Quotes/Words: Grisham's books are immensely readable in part because they use simple language with a driving focus on advancing the plot. Find an interesting metaphor or an uncommon word and you'll be hard pressed. There is an art to what Grisham does but it isn't derived from a great command of English. The one word I enjoyed quite a bit is "Racketeer".

Character: Quinn. He really risked the most in many ways and got to ham it up too. It's just hard to get behind a family of drug runners and cheer...

[Michelle, Overrun By Pets]

This is the second physical book I have read since purchasing my Kindle over a year and a half ago. In order to remember what I want to talk about, I need to take copious notes by hand because I have a terrible memory. Unfortunately this time around, my ferocious 5 pound terrier ate some of the notes and part of the actual book. In additional to having a traumatic injury of sorts because of the partial destruction of a book (I may have been a librarian in a past life because I take the handling and treatment of books very seriously - no writing in books, no ear-marking pages, no highlighting), some of my reminders are gone, so hopefully I don't miss too many juicy details.


I am a big Grisham fan and have read nearly all of his books, however this was not one of my favorites. I'm not sure if lack of research was to blame or if I went into reading this particular Grisham in a different mindset because it was our book of the month selection. Whatever the reason, many of the plot points did not ring true for me.

I started having trouble with the plot about one third of the way in. I wasn't sure why the main character was incarcerated in the first place. Why didn't he insist on a separate trial and where was his lawyer friend who had set him up with Barry Rafko in the first place?

It seemed that Grisham had something to say about the federal justice system, but he never really made the point or followed through with the "lesson." Grisham writes "But the majority of federal prisoners are nonviolent, and many are convicted of crimes that involved little, if any, criminal activity." What the hell are these people in prison for? He didn't give many great examples of non-criminal characters in the book. In fact, the only criminal I had any sympathy for was Otis Carter who was in prison for digging up civil war relics on his own property.

Halfway in I was in utter disbelief that a well connected drug family had killed a federal judge for $500,000 when they were running single drug shipments worth 5 million. Why would they bother? Also, how did the main character plan on going in to witness protection dating someone from his past who wasn't also going into the protection program? How many people go through extreme makeover transformations in the witness protection program? It might be cheaper to just relocate them to another country. My questions continued throughout the book, and sadly not the "what is going to happen next" kind of questions.

Grisham is an expert at metering out tidbits of information to keep the reader interested and reading at a fast pace. I have to give him credit for what he includes on the jacket cover, if I read the jacket cover I will ABSOLUTELY read the book. In most cases his story "filler" is technical, but not overly so, is usually interesting and helps the story. I love fast paced conspiracy/underdog fiction that combines fiction and fact into a believable story. This time around, the mix of fact and fiction just wasn't quite right.


Fifty pages in I had wholly decided that I didn't trust the main character. For a man who insisted on his innocence, he seemed exceptionally shady and overly cryptic. I also didn't care for how he interacted with and talked about women. In my opinion Malcom turned out to be worse than anything he was ever "wrongly" accused of. I was never really convinced he was innocent of the first crime. I was fairly appalled at his treatment of Nathan Cooley. Ultimately I wanted the money to go to someone else in the end, maybe a lucky UPS or FEDEX worker.


My favorite quotes included "In the war on drugs, not all battles were fought between cops and traffickers. The Jamaicans, like many police agencies in the Caribbean, had long resented the bullying from U.S. officials."

"From the moment I was indicted, my father believed I was guilty, of something." I believed this about his father who was a state trooper.

"Judges often change as they mature, but few turn as abruptly as Raymond Fawcett."


My favorite words include: digressions, tonnage, edict, meticulous, cadre, commutation, contentious, vacillate, arduous, recuse.


I had real difficulty connecting to any one character. The character I found most interesting and wanted to hear more about was Judge Ray Fawcett. He had a strange cabin with no electricity, a secret uber-pimp safe, and sordid marital indiscretions which ultimately ended badly for his poor tortured and murdered assistant Naomi.