Rogue Lawyer: A Novel

John Grisham has been a favorite of mine over the years. He tells a good story and he always exposes something about the legal system. He has touched on injustices and outright crimes perpetrated by law firms, lawyers, public defenders, public prosecutors, judges and juries; bad behavior that is rampant throughout our legal system. When he fights a particular flaw in our legal system, as he does in almost every one of the novels he has written, we are not at all surprised by the revelations he offers. We know that the system can be fair and that it can be corrupt, and we suspect that it is corrupt more often than it is fair. John Grisham also likes lawyers who are loners, who work on the fringes of the system in small offices and shopping malls. His main character is often a principled lawyer who fights the system when corruption has taken over and made it difficult for folks to get justice.In his newest book, Rogue Lawyer, we meet Sebastian Rudd, a street lawyer. He does not have a stationary office. His office is in the back of a tricked out van. He defends people who no one else wants to defend because of their obvious guilt or because s/he has been declared guilty by a system that is often only too glad to jump to conclusions. The first client we meet in the book is Gardy, probably an innocent man who the system has already decided, with almost no evidence, is guilty. Sebastian (Grisham) wants Gardy to have a fair trial but in the very small town where the crime was committed a fair trial will be almost impossible. Sebastian, because feelings are running high, stays in different motel rooms at some distance from the town changing motels as often as necessary.Mr. Rudd says, “The truth is, if I had the money, the time, and the personnel, I would bribe and/or intimidate every juror. When the State, with its limitless resources, commences a fraudulent case and cheats at every turn, then cheating is legitimized. There is no level playing field. There is no fairness. The only honorable alternative for a lawyer fighting to save an innocent client is to cheat defense.However, if a defense lawyer is caught cheating, he or she gets nailed with sanctions by the court, reprimanded by the state bar association, maybe even indicted. If a prosecutor gets caught cheating, he either gets reelected or elevated to the bench. Our system never holds a bad prosecutor accountable.”And this is not the only claim Sebastian Rudd, our rogue lawyer, levels against the system. We follow him and his partner/bodyguard/driver cleverly named Partner as he tackles several interesting cases each an example of ways that people in positions of power have found to use and abuse their position to the detriment of our entire legal system. In one of his cases we have the Renfro’s, victims of a commando style police raid on the wrong house, who face jail time because the police will never admit that they were wrong in their intelligence and that their arrest procedures were drastically over-the-top. In another case he was the lawyer for a ganged up guy named Link who is on death row when he manages to escape using his guys on the outside and who now wants his lawyer, Sebastian Rudd, to pay him back all the fees he paid to the lawyer because he was not successful in his defense of Link.We have an ex-wife who is always trying to terminate Rudd’s brief visitations with his son (his job is quite dangerous). We have the MMA fighter who goes from being under Rudd’s patronage to being his client in a self-destructive moment. And although this book is short and has a lot of white space it still manages to get us involved in Sebastian Rudd’s life and to remind us of how easy it is for our legal system to go off the rails. Except for these lone fighters that John Grisham presents us with, we are given few clues about how to reform the system. Still I leave each of Grisham’s novels full of righteous anger about how the law is being twisted into something far less that the ideals the system was set up to offer.

First off, I'm a big John Grisham fan. I'm reading through his back catalog because I went through a few years after The Brethren where I just wanted to read other stuff. So, now I'm playing catch-up. When I started Rogue Lawyer I didn't think I was going to like it, but it grabbed me about 100 pages in. It's definitely different from Grisham's other courtroom drama books, but that's not necessarily a bad thing. I ended up really liking the main character Sebastian Rudd. He was raw and quirky and just generally different from other Grisham protagonists. He was an intriguing lead character. I think that Rogue Lawyer would make a great TV series. I would definitely recommend giving Rogue Lawyer a read. I really enjoyed it in the end. If you haven't read some of Grisham's newer works, I highly recommend The Reckoning, A Time for Mercy, and the Camino Island books. He's still my favorite!

Beautifully paced book, that doesn’t get bogged down in exposition. Once I started, had a hard time putting it down.

I have read almost all of Grisham's adult legal novels. I don't think this is the best grade Grisham, but it certainly is engrossing. In evaluating Grisham's body of work, we must recognize that Grisham today, living the good life in the Virginia wine country near Charlottesville, is not the novice novelist knocking out his first books in Oxford, Mississippi. Those early books were based on excitement that grabbed the reader and held him until the last page. What could beat "The Firm" or "The Pelican Brief" for raw excitement building to a gripping climax. Now with a much larger body of work behind him, abundant financial rewards, my theory is that Grisham in his more recent novels has undertaken to use his now maturing skills as a novelist to (pardon the expression) "educate" the reader as to how the legal systems works or fails to work in its various dimensions.For example, his recent novels have focused on topics such as the mass torts bar and how it operates; public interest lawyers fighting for the environment in rural West Virginia; the shortcoming of the jury system; the deficiencies of the death penalty; and the misuse of confessions. This trend continues in this novel about a "rogue lawyer" who handles sickening criminal cases other lawyers refuse for fear of condemnation and career injury. One interesting departure from his previous novels is that this book is really five individual stories (with some overlap) told sequentially. Each story allows Grisham an individual stage to focus upon separate aspects of how the legal system operates.The sorry condition of the criminal justice system in this country is the main common theme. Given Grisham's extensive career practicing criminal law, he speaks with some authority in this area. Fair criminal trials are largely a myth; dishonest cops and ambitious prosecutors manufacture evidence in trials presided over by inept judges held before befuddled juries. Prisons present their own problems since many of the convicts were sentenced to excessive terms for non-violent crimes (an area that President Obama is currently addressing). Abuses of SWAT teams is another area that pops up, as does the unfairness of freezing defendant resources before trial. Expert witnesses (of which I am one on occasion) also come in for serious Grisham scorn. And an old favorite topic of Grisham, the bizarre world of plea bargaining, also makes an appearance.The book builds toward a dynamic conclusion as do most of its predecessors--but a surprise element arises out of the blue to spoil a "happy" ending. We also learn about some new topics (at least for me) such as volitional insantiy and sexual bondage. One great feature is that Grisham takes the reader through an entire condensed criminal trial. From my own experience as a (federal) prosecutor and college professor, criminal trials that go on all around us are really only understood by very few. As a novelist, Grisham just continues to develop his skills in constructing plots and recounting dialogue. This is just a very fine story on top of everything else.

Exciting Grisham novel!

purchased as a gift

Liked the twists in the story. A no-brainer for any lover of courtroom dramas.

John Grisham sabe mesmo como prender o leitor ! Nesse livro nos faz conhecer a nada fácil vida de um notório advogado habilidoso, corajoso no aceitar causas que os demais advogados recusam a patrocinar e o seu estilo de vida totalmente heterodoxo, quando comparado aos grandes criminalistas, e que para defender seus clientes faz uso de artimanhas não propriamente ilegais, mas eticamente discutíveis. sua vida pessoal é um caso à parte.Além de propiciar uma boa diversão, o livro revela, de forma bem tênue, as distorções e mazelas do sistema judicial norte-americano, principalmente em relação aos promotores de justiça, que visam, no mais das vezes, a vencer uma causa e não exatamente fazer prevalecer a verdade.

Buena perspectiva de la visión de un abogado con problemas familiares, aficiones extrañas mezcladas con patrocinio y un excelente manejo de sus casos hacen de esta novela una de muy fácil lectura y del más clásico estilo Grisham.

Excelente trama, subdividida em diferentes histórias. Não é um dos melhores livros de John Grisham, mas é ótimo, mesmo assim!

Con un ritmo tenso y acelerado pero sin dejar un cabo suelto, John Grisham presenta la crónica de unos días en la vida de un abogado defensor dispuesto a casi todo por obtener para sus defendidos la presunción de inocencia y asegurarles un juicio justo, aún contra leyes torcidas y faltas de ética impuestas por el sistema en que se mueve. Excelente novela.