The King Of Torts: A gripping crime thriller from the Sunday Times bestselling author - Softcover

Grisham, John

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0099537133 ISBN 13: 9780099537137

Publisher: Arrow, 2011

Synopsis

Tort, noun: a harmful act, or failure to act, which justifies legal action and the possibility of paying damages
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The Office of the Public Defender is not known as a training ground for bright young litigators. Clay Carter has been there too long, and, like most of his colleagues, dreams of a better job in a real firm. When he reluctantly takes the case of a young man charged with a random street killing, he assumes it is just another of the many senseless murders that hit Washington D.C. every week.

But as he digs deeper into his client's background, Clay stumbles upon a conspiracy too horrible to believe. A pharmaceutical giant has been secretly and illegally testing a new drug on addicts – one that helps stop addiction, but which drives them to random acts of violence.

Overnight, aided by a mysterious whistleblower with an agenda of his own, Clay becomes the new 'king of torts', a celebrity among lawyers and a national media figure.

But as the financial stakes rise and rise, so does the danger...

About this title

Review:

John Grisham's The King of Torts demonstrates that his narrative skills remain as impeccable as ever. Grisham knows exactly what he's doing when it comes to transfixing the reader.

Within the high-powered milieu of the public defender's office in Washington DC, Grisham's protagonist is an ambitious young lawyer who finds himself saddled with what appears to be a nothing case: one of a wave of crack cocaine killings that are the bane of the capital. But as Clay Carter investigates, he finds that something more than a random street murder is involved here and a massive conspiracy becomes apparent. The stakes are suddenly very high indeed.

If the skulduggery here (involving one of the largest pharmaceutical companies in the world) is a tad familiar, Grisham remains nonpareil when it comes to delivering a smoothly engineered plot. A fresh touch is Carter's desire to break free from the routine cases he has been handling: this quickly becomes a case of beware what you wish for. Another innovative touch is the refusal to tie up the narrative in the expected ways: The King of Torts has much more verisimilitude in this area than most legal thrillers. One more thing, Grisham's prose now has a sardonic, satirical quality that suggests the Tom Wolfe of Bonfire of the Vanities. --Barry Forshaw

Review:

"Page-turningly compulsive" (Daily Mail)

"Grisham reigns supreme... another tremendous tour de force" (Sunday Express)

"A rollercoaster ride" (The Times)

"This novel has incident to burn, a clean, pacy style and a conclusion that will blindside the reader" (Telegraph)

About this edition

• Publisher: Arrow
• Publication date: 2011
• ISBN 10: 0099537133
• ISBN 13: 9780099537137
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 496