Of very uneven quality but on the whole entertaining | The Rainmaker

Good read. Got me through the weekend | The Rainmaker | John Grisham

books:


	• The Rainmaker John Grisham Delta, 2005 - 576 pages average customer review:based on 360 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

4 ½ stars. Wow what a great story teller! A number of events surprised me. I found myself smiling several times.

REVIEWER'S OPINION:
I love the unexpected which this novel has. His characters might be stereotypes, but they were well done, fun, and had me chuckling. The theme is David vs. Goliath. The ending is happy with a bitter component. The evil, greedy, large corporation leaves a bad taste. The story took a while to get going which was fine. But the last third of the book had me on the edge of my seat, not wanting to put it down. Before reading it I didn't know if I was going to like reading about an insurance company trial. But I did. It was excellent.

Most of my reading is romance novels, so for me to love something like this should say something about its broad appeal and entertainment value.

If I could, I would change two things about the story. (1) The ending was happy, but it could have been happier. (2) Grisham never tells us who burned down a law firm early in the story. I was wondering if Great Benefit was behind it, but it was never explained.

STORY BRIEF:
Rudy just finished law school, is broke and cannot find a job. He passes the bar and gets his license just in time to represent a low income family against an insurance company.

DATA:
Setting: current day mostly Memphis, Tennessee. Copyright: 1995. Genre: legal suspense.

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Of very uneven quality but on the whole entertaining

The main storyline contains courtroom drama that matches Grisham's best for attorney shenanigans and legal surprises. I couldn't stop reading the portions that described the trial.

On first reading, the first 100 pages bored me. But now that I am re-reading, I see the point and they are ok.

The conclusion is bizarre and anticlimactic and seems silly, as though Grisham couldn't come up with a sensible end. The love intrigue is irrelevant to the case against the insurance company and is contrived.

The story is marred by Grisham's tendency to use his story for his far-left activism. Here it is a campaign against big corporations (insurance, in this case) and abusive husbands.

With good editing, condensation, and self-discipline, this could have been a masterpiece.

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Good read. Got me through the weekend

Not much of a thriller and I don't find the plot complex nor content a thought provoking.
I don't find much of humor either.
Things and events just falls into predictable courses in favor of the protagonist, well almost...

Still, I've enjoyed this book from cover to cover.
Rudy Baylor, somewhat a modest character, has a charm and sympathetic character that I had to follow him till the end of the story.
Good read!

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Inspired Me to Read His Other Books

This was the first book I had ever read from Mr. Grisham. Rudy as a character was amazing. I could not put this down. The plot is riviting and moving. It made me want to read his other books. I think I'll watch the movie.

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John Grisham's five novels -- A Time To Kill, The Firm, The Pelican Brief, The Client, and The Chamber -- have been number one best-sellers, and have a combined total of 47 million copies in print. Now, inThe Rainmaker, Grisham returns to the courtroom for the first time since A Time To Kill, and weaves a riveting tale of legal intrigue and corporate greed. Combining suspense, narrative momentum, and humor as only John Grisham can, this is another spellbinding read from the most popular author of our time.

Grisham's sixth spellbinding novel of legal intrigue and corporate greed displays all of the intricate plotting, fast-paced action, humor, and suspense that have made him the most popular author of our time. In his first courtroom thriller since A Time To Kill, John Grisham tells the story of a young man barely out of law school who finds himself taking on one of the most powerful, corrupt, and ruthless companies in America -- and exposing a complex, multibillion-dollar insurance scam. In hs final semester of law school Rudy Baylor is required to provide free legal advice to a group of senior citizens, and it is there that he meets his first "clients," Dot and Buddy Black. Their son, Donny Ray, is dying of leukemia, and their insurance company has flatly refused to pay for his medical treatments. While Rudy is at first skeptical, he soon realizes that the Blacks really have been shockingly mistreated by the huge company, and that he just may have stumbled upon one of the largest insurance frauds anyone's ever seen -- and one of the most lucrative and important cases in the history of civil litigation. The problem is, Rudy's flat broke, has no job, hasn't even passed the bar, and is about to go head-to-head with one of the best defense attorneys -- and powerful industries -- in America.

From the Hardcover edition.

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