The Racketeer

John Grisham brings a thriller about a lawyer who has been falsely accused and imprisoned for 10 years, and gets his ticket out when a presiding federal court judge is brutally murdered.

The Racketeer is about Malcolm Bannister, a black, small town lawyer who gets swept up in a storm of a big racket, who pleads innocence till the end, and is still imprisoned for a long time. A sad reality and a similar story of many others in many countries. Judge Fawcett, a presiding federal court judge and his girlfriend are murdered in their cabin, the intruder leaving no clue, and motive being robbery.

The FBI keeps chasing and winding up empty handed on many occasions, when Malcolm Bannister claims he knows the murderer and wants out, as his price.

The premise is promising and so is the story. It doesn’t give you any wild twists and turns, but it does keep you guessing as to where the story is going to turn. The characters are well built and it does give an insight of how life is like for people who are incarcerated, and how they deal with it, especially people who made one small mistake, or sometimes no mistake at all. Malcolm being a husband, father, son, shows many facets of his life, and coming to terms with the fact that this is his life now. You do sympathize with all that he has gone through, and even though this keeps turning into a Breaking Bad situation, you still are always on his side.

The book is not very fast-paced. It gives the reader ample time to get to know all the players in the field. Details are laid out in a very specific manner. While this might help the reader in the beginning, but after a while it becomes repetitive. Finishing the book just today, I as a reader don’t even remember half the details laid out, because it actually has no significant bearing. The book also gets a lot technical in judiciary and law matters, but you get through it quickly, and this being a crime thriller, you need to know some details, otherwise it won’t make much sense.

To summarize, it is a good book to read at least once. Not a big page Turner, but you won’t be bored either. Pick it up on a lazy weekend, and have fun.