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In Review: The Racketeer By John Grisham
As Reviewed by Macy Walsh
The prolific and popular John Grisham has been a fixture on national bestseller lists since the publication of his breakout novel The Firm in 1991, and it’s not hard to see why. The Racketeer is Grisham’s thirtieth book, and it’s a powerhouse display of his signature strengths: imaginative plotting; a fluent, deceptively effortless prose style; and an insider’s view of our complex and flawed legal system. Still, The Racketeer is a departure for Mr. Grisham. Unlike many of his other works, he’s got no judicial soapbox to stand on here. The impetus for this book may well have come from the Innocence Project, an organization devoted to assisting falsely incarcerated prisoners, and a group on whose board of directors Mr. Grisham serves.
This tale opens with the eponymous racketeer, Malcolm Bannister, telling us, “I am a lawyer and I am in prison. It’s a long story.” As we begin, Bannister is halfway through a ten year sentence for money laundering; his real crime, however, was picking the wrong client. A small town lawyer with a modest practice, Bannister saw his life unravel when he agreed to handle a real estate transaction for white collar crook Barry ‘The Backhander’ Rafko. Ignorant of his client’s history and reputation, Bannister and several other unwitting participants were swept up in a tide of indictments when Rafko was arrested on multiple counts of conspiracy and financial malfeasance. Bannister received an excessive sentence, one that stripped him of his family, freedom and career, leaving him embittered and eager for revenge.
Five years later, Bannister gets his chance when a corrupt federal judge is murdered, along with his secretary/mistress, in an isolated cabin in the mountains of southwest Virginia. Stymied by a lack of witnesses and an absence of forensic evidence, the FBI investigation goes nowhere – until Bannister steps in. A jailhouse lawyer with access to a great many criminal secrets, he alone knows the killer’s motive and identity, and he offers to trade that knowledge for money, freedom and a fresh start. When the FBI accepts his offer and successfully indicts the newly identified suspect, Bannister – re-christened Max Baldwin – embarks on a new life. At this point, the real underlying story truly begins.
What follows is a cleverly orchestrated series of twists and reversals. As he shuttles his characters from Maryland to Florida to the Caribbean, Grisham transforms his straightforward tale into an elaborate caper that is ingenious and suspenseful. At times, the convoluted scheme that unfolds seems almost too elaborate and dependent on crucial events, any one of which could cause the scenario to collapse. But like his protagonist, Grisham holds it all together with a headlong narrative energy that rarely flags. The result is a satisfying, deeply engrossing thriller in which different forms of justice are ultimately served.
The Racketeer is almost nonchalant in illustrating the varied ways in which one might circumvent the FBI, violate financial regulations and prove that crime might pay after all. But the book is too cheerful to invite readers to pass judgment on Max. Mr. Grisham allows us to sympathize enough with his unfair prosecution to justify anything he does afterward. He anatomizes the drab routines of a minimum security prison, describes interrogation techniques that can lead to coerced confessions and imagines the process by which a newly released prisoner discovers the “exhilarating and indescribable” pleasures of freedom.
Throughout the novel, Grisham never loses sight of the central questions that underlie the story at every turn: How equitable – how humane – is our system of justice? How often are punishments disproportionate to crimes? In Bannister’s words, “The real tragedy of the federal criminal system is not the absurdities. It is the ruined and wasted lives.” Grisham addresses this tragedy cogently and in the way he knows best: by telling a story that is engaging and illuminating in equal measure.
Be sure to put this one on your summer reading list!
In the start it will be a little bit boring like an usual story but when
the facts are revealed you will get lost in it..