The Runaway Jury

The Runaway Jury by John Grisham is a very well written courtroom drama about a fictitious tobacco litigation case with an interesting plot twist with the plots of Nicholas Easter and Marlee. I won't go more into it so as not to spoil the fun of reading this plot for those who have not read the book as of yet. The thing I liked most about the plot is that no one seemed to be a "good guy" in all of this despite the fact that on the bad guy side there were the tobacco companies. Because of the way the characters were set, no one came off as a good guy and everyone came off kind of scummy. This is an interesting way for an author to approach a story and one that makes a reader more captivated than they otherwise would be in my opinion.
Characters on the whole were well developed, though he seemed to come right out and say what the characteristics of the characters were rather than inferring their nature through conversations and actions. However, it seemed that Grisham was aiming for a straight forward, easy read so in that respect he accomplished what he was going for. Overall, there may have been too many characters that made it a little hard to follow at times, but given the nature of the plot, a large cast of characters was necessary.

Overall, I felt that this story was fairly well told and is one of the better books put out there by Grisham having read some of his others. The language of the book is clear and concise with very little unnecessary embellishment of his prose to provide for a quick read. At the same time, some issues could have been improved in the same area because it seemed a little too clear cut.