This was an interesting John Grisham novel. I still feel that "A time to kill" was the best Grisham has ever written. However, this novel had lots of twists and turns to keep me guessing. The book description wasn't terribly telling regarding what this book was truly about. It is less about the murder of a federal court judge, and certainly not about a lawyer, practicing law as we have come to expect from Grisham. But an interesting web of deceptions is put into play by a jailed, former attorney, to effect both his release from prison and his security in the outside world. The novel definitely picked up as the book went on. The ending was conveniently tidy. My criticism is that I wasn't given enough information along the way to "solve" the mystery as it unfolded so I was taken by surprise by some of the ways the book came together. That said, this is a better book than Grisham has put out in a long time.

Having been disappointed with some of Grisham's recent novels, I approached this read with some trepidation. It seemed to start a bit slow with what appeared to me to be too much back story. However, as the plot developed my enjoyment of the story increased. In this tale, Grisham has woven an intricate tale full of twists and turns. Basically, a black lawyer, Malcolm Bannister, is caught up unfairly in a large sweep of criminals and sent to a prison camp for ten years. While there his wife divorces him, his disappointed father visits monthly, and he uses his legal skills to help prisoners. Then the judge who sentenced him is killed along with his secretary and his safe is emptied. What was in the safe? Who killed them? Malcolm seems to know and he uses this knowledge to come up with a scheme to get out of jail. His unbelievable scheme entertains us even as we cheer him for the way he cons the FBI. Or does he con them? Like many of Grisham's books, this too is a terrible indictment on the American justice system, the prison system, the FBI, and corruption in general.

I found this to be an excellent book and after not reading John for a few years I certainly remembered why I enjoyed reading him so much. This is a must read.

Although I give Grisham a 4 star I only give him a 2 on the first half of the book. It took far to long to get the story going. To much backtracking in the first half of the book. His character "Bannister" pulled together a fantastic scheme. The ending was a bit to convienent. I expect more of Grisham. He said himself that he wrote this one with little research, "of the top". However, if you are a Grsiham fan you will want to read it!

It was put together really well obv. a Grisham. I really enjoyed the ending ;)

I enjoyed this read, read it pretty quick by my standards. It is a typical Grisham novel, engaging and detailed. It took me a bit to figure out what was going to happen but when I did it was plainly obvious. Still a great read though.

John Grisham's last book - The Litigators - was one of my favourites by this award winning author. (my review) I was pretty excited to read his latest - The Racketeer. Racketeer: "A person who commits crimes such as extortion, loansharking, bribery, and obstruction of justice in furtherance of illegal business activities." Malcolm Bannister is a former attorney, currently serving time in the Frostburg, Maryland prison camp for money laundering. Trouble is, he swears he's innocent - he just picked the wrong client. License gone, wife gone, everything he had - gone. Five years into his sentence, he may have found a way out. He knows who killed Federal Judge Raymond Fawcett, found dead in his cabin retreat beside an empty safe. Can he bargain the killer's name for his freedom? And what about what was taken from the safe? There's a lot of people after that knowledge... I love 'heist' and 'sting' type movies such as Ocean's Eleven. Grisham weaves his own take on the heist scenario with The Racketeer. And it's a great piece of storytelling. This is still a 'legal' thriller to a degree, but I think Grisham just had a lot of fun with this one. It's not a serious book, but an entertaining tale. As he says in the author notes at the end: " The Racketeer is indeed a work of fiction. Accuracy was not deemed crucial. Long paragraphs of fiction were used to avoid looking up facts." I chose to listen to this book. J.D. Jackson was the reader and his voice was perfectly suited to the main character. Macolm changes his speech patterns at one point and I did find the slower pace a bit annoying. I just wanted the story to move along. The only reason I'm giving this a four instead of a five is that there was just something about Malcolm I didn't like. He's the one we should be rooting for, but I found him to be pompous and cocky. I never did feel sorry for him. Did he get what he deserved? In his eyes, yes. In mine - not really. I almost felt sorry for the 'bad guy'. I don't know that it was Malcolm's place to mete out judgment. In the end he's no better and his protestations of innocence at the beginning of the book are moot. Still, I quite enjoyed it. Not his best, but entertaining nonetheless.