THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Wednesday, June 7, 1995 TAG: 9506070056
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E3 EDITION: FINAL
COLUMN: BOOK REVIEW
SOURCE: BY ANN G. SJOERDSMA
LENGTH: Medium: 80 lines
LAWYER-TURNED-novelist John Grisham has parlayed lawyer-bashing - a popular sport with no apparent rules - into a multimillion-dollar enterprise. And I, for one, also a ``lapsed'' lawyer, concerned about hypocrisy, greed and other ethical breaches within the profession, am tired of his over-the-top antics. To read a Grisham ``thriller'' (``The Firm,'' ``The Pelican Brief,'' ``The Client'') is usually to read a novel of the absurd, and an unsuspenseful one at that. ``The Rainmaker'' (Doubleday, 434 pp., $25.95), his latest, is no exception.
Grisham dispenses with his signature slam-bang opening here. Instead, ``The Rainmaker'' posits whiny, self-centered Rudy Baylor at Memphis State law school, in his third year, with six weeks to go. ``Law school is nothing but three years of wasted stress,'' he complains, in one of several unimaginative law-school-bashing passages. Disciplined thought and library research appeal not to the poor, lazy protagonist, but big bucks have an allure.
That Rudy studies for the July bar exam before finals, graduation and the start of a review course is absurd - Grisham never lets reality deter him - but even more laughable is the negligent professorial oversight he receives in one of his ``worthless'' elective courses, ``Legal Problems of the Elderly,'' a k a, to Rudy, ``Geezer Law.'' Grisham needs the doddering Professor Smoot in order for his snot-nosed law student to walk away with an elderly client who has a multimillion-dollar bad-faith claim against an insurance giant. David can't slay Goliath without a big rock to put in his puny slingshot.
Per Grisham's style, plot conveniences and loose ends abound. Rudy is screwed over by the small-firm ``guys'' who promised him a job, after a fat-cat law firm buys them out. (Note: This is a ``guys'' novel: Only women who are abused and need manly protection appear; all prominent lawyers are ``suits,'' and Grisham even uses that old saw about the law being a ``jealous mistress.'') Out of work, but contemptuous of respectable, low-paying attorney jobs, Rudy shops around, hiring himself out as a paralegal for a year! (Sure.) Of course, the sleazebag lawyer who hired Rudy screws him over - wanting only the lucrative insurance case, you see - and his law firm burns to the ground, with a security guard inside. Why? Who? You tell me.
Moving right along, Rudy cuts a deal with an ambulance-chasing mobster-lawyer, who conveniently disappears in time for Rudy, who conveniently just passed the bar, to become chief counsel on the ``Geezer Law''-obtained bad-faith case against Great Benefit, the insurance company conveniently represented by the fat-cat law firm that screwed over Rudy. It's the little guy, the arrogant twerp in blue jeans, against the big guys, the legions of dark suits; and guess who's gonna win? (Hint: Rudy becomes F. Lee Bailey overnight.)
It seems Great Benefit has been running a scam, denying valid medical claims and paying up only when litigation is threatened. Rudy's client Dot Black, the mother of leukemia-stricken Donny Ray, didn't immediately seek out a lawyer when Great Benefit denied coverage for her son's life-saving bone-marrow transplant. Now Donny Ray is dying, and Dot, seeking justice not money, won't settle out of court. When the insurance company-friendly, white judge, a Yale crony of defendant's counsel who should recuse himself from the case, conveniently dies, Rudy lucks out with the conveniently quick appointment of a plaintiff-friendly, black judge who, in a grossly biased fashion, favors him at every turn. (The author doesn't shy away from race/sex stereotypes.)
Grisham makes some valid points about the wasteful mountain of paper (not to mention attorney's fees and time expended) that accumulates in, and deliberately delays big-money insurance cases, but they are lost in the absurd: a judge and jury who do cartwheels for the plaintiff; outrageously dirty lawyer tricks; unethical out-of-court maneuvering; weak courtroom testimony. The defendant shows up for trial just to be bashed by that champion of the little person, John Grisham, who conveniently ends this listless tale with Rudy filing a divorce complaint, sans his client's signature, and managing to beat physical evidence of crime.
I can't suspend my disbelief for Grisham. He isn't writing satire. He's just bashing. And it's much too easy for him. MEMO: Ann G. Sjoerdsma is book editor of The Virginian-Pilot and The
Ledger-Star.
by CNB