The Racketeer

I'm counting this as read although I had a disc and a half left when I had to return it to the library. I ended up reading spoilers online. I'm not a huge fan of books where I don't have the slightest hint or clue why the character is doing anything. I though this book was eh, and like always, had almost no likeable characters.

Executive Summary: This one is just too ridiculous to really be enjoyable to me. Not one of Mr. Grisham's better works.Audio book: I believe this is the first book I've listened to by J.D. Jackson. He's not a bad reader. He takes a stab at some accents. He does a reasonable job given the material he has to work with.Full ReviewI almost debated not reviewing this one. People who normally read/like my reviews probably won't have interest in it anyways, but I decide if nothing else to get my thoughts down before I put this book completely out of my brain.I loved John Grisham when I was younger. My mom always read his books and I tended to pick them up when she was done. In the last few years I would occasionally grab his newer works in audio cd from the library as something to pass time on road trips.I can't tell if my tastes have just changed, or if his writing has gone down hill. I'm too busy to go back and re-read the ones I liked to find out.This book had no likable characters for me and I saw the “big twist” coming a mile away. It wasn't awful, but if it wasn't so short I would have just quit. Somewhere in the middle the story takes an abrupt shift that was rather confusing until I realized it was the way Mr. Grisham was facilitating the “big twist” I had predicted without even trying.If you want to try Mr. Grisham, don't start here. Go with something like [b:A Time to Kill 32542 A Time to Kill (Jake Brigance, #1) John Grisham https://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1320488160s/32542.jpg 1804929] or [b:The Firm 5358 The Firm John Grisham https://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1165518895s/5358.jpg 38270].OK, that's probably more words than this one deserved.

I chose a John Grisham book to help me get back into the habit of reading as, in the past, I've found his books to be quick page-turners- hard to put down. This, his latest book, had good reviews and the premise seemed intriguing.

Alas, I was largely dissppointed by the book. The plot centers around a lawyer in jail for racketeering who supposedly knows the identity of the murderer of a federal judge. Right off the bat several elements of the plot seemed largely implausible including the claim that the protagonist was more or less innocent of the charges that landed him in jail. More annoying was Grisham's use of the first-person narrative interjected with occassional passages of third-person. In another setting, this might have worked, but here it was clumsy.

The storytelling lacked any real excitement - at no time did I ever feel the characters to be in peril. Instead it was the slow, and at times laborius, detailing of a convulted scheme. There are countless passages that read like a travel itinerary as though Grisham was merely trying to fill pages.

Two final quibbles: Grisham almost brags in the Author's Note at the end that he did no research for this book. It is painfully obvious in his whole attitude towards the story. I suppose when you are successful as Grisham, you can phone one in from time to time as he does here.

My other quibble is that Grisham, who is white, chose to make the protagonist African-American, then write in first person. Ultimately it doesn't ring true leaving us with a character who is neither likable or memorable.

Some have called this book a “return to form” for Grisham, but I know he has written much better.