The Litigators by John Grisham

Reviewed by Gerti

I’ve read a good number of John Grisham’s legal dramas. Some, like “The Last Juror”, are amazing. While not up to the absolute genius of that book, “The Litigators” still shows that Grisham could teach a master class in storytelling. His effortless writing is a joy to read, as is his story here of a lawyer at a prestigious firm in Chicago who snaps, gets very drunk, and takes a job with two ambulance chasers. Although Harvard educated, David Zinc is fed up with sitting in a windowless room and doing international bond fund litigation. So after a panic attack, he finds himself a job where he isn’t working 80 hours a week – at the boutique (read, small) firm of Finley & Figg.

Oscar Finley is tired – he’s tired of his wife, and of his dead-end career in law. He wants to get a divorce (and retire) but can’t seem to pull the trigger until the firm gets in way over its head, thanks to his partner, Wally Figg. Wally is a few years younger, and has no problem divorcing wives. In fact, he’s already divorced three or four, and is just about ready to slip into another marriage when he notices that his hooker-cum-girlfriend (can I even say that?) is only interested in the money that may result from a mass tort lawsuit that Wally has filed in federal court.

Thank God for David, who comes into the story a drunken bum but ends up the hero of the tale. When one partner has a heart attack and the other runs away to drink, abandoning him during a very public trial, David does the best he can to save the case, and the law firm’s reputation. His good heart shows through time and again, as he and his wife spend their down time dining with a down-on-their-luck immigrant family whose son has been brain-damaged because of lead poisoning from toy teeth. First David helps the family (and some of their other immigrant friends) get their overdue wages from a local builder who refused to pay them in a timely manner. He then goes after the irresponsible toy manufacturer which made the poison toy teeth and gets the family a settlement that enables them to take care of the poor child and pay off 100s of thousands of dollars in previous medical expenses.

Unlike some of Grisham’s other works where the protagonist is a rat, in “The Litigators”, you cheer for David, and even kind of like his hapless friends, Finley and Figg, as they exhibit very human weaknesses, before triumphing in the end. “The Litigators” has enough twists and turns to keep it interesting, and does not resort to the bad writer’s trick of giving every longshot victory to the hero. All the “good guys” have some redeeming qualities, and the bad guys are bad enough to make readers “boo”. “The Litigators” was a delight to read from beginning to end, and I thoroughly enjoyed inhabiting the world of these fascinating characters for the two days it took me to finish the book.