The Whistler

“And it’s often the one you trust the most who’ll cut your throat for the right price.”

― John Grisham

Why I’m Reading this Book?

When one read books on Kindle, they inadvertently sees new books in the market in ads. For last couple of weeks, a book was coming in this category, “The judge’s list”. This is a new book from John Grisham and its synopsis was alluring enough for me to check it out. I got to know that there are 2 more books before this one in the series. First was ‘Witness to a trial’, which has about 35 pages and it sets the premises for the second book, which is ‘Whistler’. I don’t know if Whistler is needed to be read before Judge’s list but I like John Grisham and I wanted to read the series from the start, so that’s why I’m reading this book.

Synopsis

Florida board on judicial conducts investigates corrupt judges and removes them if found guilty. One day, this department receives a complaint about a Judge with spotless reputation , which involves casino mafia, big bucks, death row cases and corruption at extreme level. First skeptical, Lacy who is an investigator, looks into the affair and gets pulled into the dangerous world which is not entirely up to her alley.

Murder, surveillance , FBI , everything gets pulled into this and we see how Lacy helps in bringing down the most corrupt judge till date.

My Review…

As usual with John Grisham’s book, story is fast paced and legal process is told in a way that a laymen can appreciate how it works without getting bored.

However, I found this story very mediocre. There were not a lot of surprise elements, no court-room drama, no defense-prosecutor bickering, no last minute loopholes to save a defendant. Basically, all things I like in a book based on legal process were missing. I’ve read Grisham before in ‘Sycamore Row’ and ‘A time to kill’ ; and I liked both of them. But this book was not up to that standard.

It was a very simple story of a corrupt judge and then how the judge got caught which was also not very surprising as somebody squealed and after that it was just a matter of looking into the affair.

I’ll give a chance to ‘Judge’s list’ though as my faith is not shaken in John Grisham.

My Rating — 2

On the scale of: (1- Hate , 2- Neither like nor dislike, 3- Like, 4- Love, 5- Gaga)

Why anyone else should read this Book?

People with affinity towards legal subjects can give this a try.

If you have spare time and nothing to do, you can read this. It is not marvelous, but can be read as one of those books you find in a cabin. Basically, a time-pass.

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“A writer only begins a book. A reader finishes it.” – Samuel Johnson

Love, Richa