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The King of Torts

Author : John Grisham
Reviewed by : Seshasayee Gopi, b 1989
Genre classification by reviewer : Law Fiction
Bottomline : Juggling with law, especially Torts; from rags to riches and back to rags again.
Age group : 17 +

  Clay Carter,a talented lawyer wastes his skill in the gutter called OPD (Office of the Public Defender). With an annual income of just above $40000, he barely manages to make two ends meet, leave alone showing off. He worked in a cramped office, which looked like an over-used attic, he drove an old rusty car, which is no more manufactured, he has no suits of his own, except an ancestory gray one, and he shared an apartment with a pal. All these and much more results in an inevitable crash in his love life. Rebacca, who he has been going steady with for four years, was the daughter of two of the most vainglorious and pompous people in the whole of D.C...and the with the pressure of a social life, if rich, Rebacca's father starts advicing Clay on how to mend his career, or rather how to ammend it. Thorougly disgruntled by this, and again the pressure of social life, Rebacca and Clay almost snap the already tight strings between them, leaving a small, thin, negligible thread, for a one-month watch-period. With nothing much to do, Clay lands with a random street-murder case, which D.C. is very famous for. His client is a teenaged drug-addict who went by the name Tequila Watson. As he delves deeper into the case and investigates it, a mysterious guy called Max Pace, whose character is concealed by a shady past, drops in from no-where and strikes a deal with Clay. With thus said thus much, thus was born, The Law Offices of J.Clay Carter II. Max Pace reveals many secrets, and Clay Carter harvests everyone of them. As a result, from one of the lowest paid lawyers in D.C., Clay grows with mind-boggling speed to become one of the largest of millionaires. From the teeny-weeny label of a pathetic Public defender, Clay metamorphasises to become a huge hurricane to reckon with in the American law circle, to become a foundation-shaker of huge corporations, to become the King of Torts. In the meanwhile, Rebacca becomes history and she is married to a high-profile lawyer who worked 18 hours a day. With millions earned in torts, helped ofcourse by the ill-gotten and dirty secrets let out by Max Pace, Clay gets crowned, honoured, praised, dethroned, stripped, analysed, cautioned, defamed, and again appreciated - all almost simultaneously by the Fourth Estate. Clay's euphoria in arriving at a huge settlement from Ackerman Labs for a malfunctioning medicine, turns out to be ephemeral. The victory back-fires and the worst fear of lawyers - being sued by a co-lawyer, now haunts Clay. He is sued by a quick-witted and fair lawyer for not protecting his clients. A client dies, the case becomes worse, many-zeroed investments in a huge tort goes down the drain, FBI investigates him for Securities Fraud (which was actually the handwork of Martin Grace a.k.a. Mike Packer a.k.a. Nelson Martin a.k.a. Max Pace !). Clay is nailed. But hey! So is Rebacca's marriage! The story ends echoing the famous, meaningful but outrageously cliched saying of Shakespeare which meant everything that was...well...which meant everything ended. And whats more...there reigned once the most powerful King of Torts, J.Clay Carter II, The King of Torts.


A Review by Seshasayee Gopi