The Last Jurist

While driving back from FL H and I listened to the John Grisham's The Last Juror. It is what you'd expect from Grisham. The writing is decent and the story is based around a court house in the south. Unlike Grisham's earlier works The Last Juror is a rambling behemoth of a narrative. It tells the tale of a small Southern town in the 70's through the eyes of a young newspaper man. The narrator becomes enthralled by a black family and this provides him with plenty of ammunition to preach about how backwards the South was and how unfair racism is. The presumptive driver of the narrative is a murder trial and its decade-long effect on the town. It is, however, pretty weak tea. The trial lacks any real drama. The middle of the book sort of just rambles. The last quarter of the book has some suspense, but the resolution leaves you feeling like you'd eaten cheap Chinese food. Full but unsatisfied and frustrated by the knowledge that you'll be more hungry in a few hours. As a way to pass 20 hours driving in a car, it is not the worst thing. As filler to read at a beach, it would suffice. As a pre-sleep book, it would work. For a good read, it is worse than bad pizza.