Clay Carter has spent five years as a public defender and would love to get out of it. He gets slapped with a murder case that he can't pass off to someone else at first. However, he gets an offer that seems too good to be true (well, it becomes obvious very fast--right away--that all of this is too good to be true and that the person offering it to him is shady, so that didn't bode well). He becomes the newest "king of torts" fairly soon and his quick success and big money are things he really doesn't handle as wisely as he should (shocking, I know).

This is my second Grisham novel--I am not even sure which one I read before it was so long ago, so I am guessing it is one of his first novels, if not his first. Legal thrillers are not my cup of tea, well, at least not ones involving tort law!

A novel about greediness and change of fortune. Well written, but not among the best ones. Characters are not so defined, Ridley does not fit the story, the Tarvan case is non-credible. above all, Clay could be a nicer guy.

Grisham is a wonderful story teller. His pacing is really good and his characters generally interesting. In this one we focus on the rise and fall of Clay Carter. He begins as an under paid public defender who investigates the strange violence of a young druggie. He is approached by a "fixer" who steers him into a world of class action law suits that make Clay a transient "King of Torts" with money beyond his wildest dreams. Then the wheels come off. Clay is not always a sympathetic character but he is a good vehicle to explore the jungle of tort law, its good and bad sides. There are people who need defending from these types of corporations, but there are excesses for sure. I recommend this book as both fun and interesting.

The King of Torts, read by Dennis Boutsikaris, is incredible fun. I read this after reading "Sycamore row", a much deeper and multi-layered novel, and despite the very different, almost light-hearted tone, and the much quicker pace (maybe because of the abridged version), this is another fantastic read. Yes there is not much character development, but I think that was a choice. The plot moves very fast, it has a great rhythm, and you learn about the world of class action torts in the process.
While Sycamore is more about various types of lawyers, but at its core it focuses on the good that a great lawyer can do, King of Torts focuses on the bad that a greedy lawyer can do. Oh, so bad. To society, to innocent people, and to other lawyers. And the great protagonist, as always with Grisham, is money: Sycamore is about money and its complex influence on many lives, Torts is about money and the destructive power of greed. Read it, it's a great book.

Another Grisham book ticked off my list. I don't remember having read this one before. The author has blended his usual mix of courtroom drama, rich lawyers and powerful companies in this novel. It will have you hooked until the last page.

I actually preferred this novel to The Street Lawyer which I also read recently. I didn't like the way that Grisham had focused on charity/benevolent work amongst the homeless almost as a selfish pursuit for the young lawyer to find himself. This novel, however, was different--it is totally secular with no real mention of faith/God or anything similar. Sometimes it is better not to try and mix the spiritual with the secular unless you are going to be accurate and ensure you represent the right principles.

This novel tells the story of Clay, a young lawyer struggling to make a name for himself at a little known firm. He is approached apparently randomly by a man who promises riches and fame if he follows his instructions to the letter. The requirements seem at first to be ethical and Clay is drawn into the web. He becomes a millionaire and the King of Torts leading mass civil litigation where-ever it exists. But it all seems a little too good to be true.......

The biblical principles in this novel are obvious. The love of money is a root of all kinds of evil. The rich man went away sad when Jesus suggested he should give up his wealth. Another man stored up wealth in barns but was called a fool when God took his life and he wasn't prepared to meet his Maker. We are told not to love the world or anything in the world. There are numerous warnings about those who choose money over God. Even from a less religious perspective we know that absolute power corrupts absolutely....

Most people are chasing money in some form or another. The point that this novel makes is that even when one gains more of it than they know what to do with. They will not be happy. It brings out the consequences in terms of friendships, relationships, health and just generally the emptiness of a life focused on temporary things that will be worthless in eternity.

This is a good book for those who believe that if they get that promotion, that new house, that new car or whatever it might be, it will satisfy. It won't.

There is some bad language and violence but nothing graphic. There are sexual inferences and some lude remarks but again not graphic.

What shall it profit a man if he gains the whole world yet loses his own soul.

Check out my John Grisham Shelf!

As usual, this book it well written. Grisham tells the story of the meteoric rise and subsequent fall of the newest, hottest lawyer in the DC area. The problem that I found with this book is that I simply didn't care about any of the main characters in this book. The main character's greed and foolishness is shocking, and by the end of the book I found that like him, I was shrugging at 9 million dollars. But still, I found the characters uninteresting or distasteful. It was more out of a sense of duty that I managed to finished this book. I finished it with a half-hearted "eh!"

This was one of those books where you know where it's headed on page 15 and then spend another few hundred pages wondering why you bother to read it. If I hadn't been on vacation, this book would have been discarded at page 50. The story isn't worth the paper it's written on so I won't waste any ink on it here.

The story kept me engaged for the first half of the book. It is a fast paced ride from rags to riches in the world of mass torts. But when the action slows down, the flaws of the story become apparent and the last few chapters feel really rushed. The only character development happens in reverse. The protagonist feels more one-dimensional at the end than he did at the start and I lost all sympathy for him at some point, probably during one of those awkward relationship scenes where his lack of character really shows.

Why do I keep doing this to myself?
Every Grisham I read seems to get worse and worse and this was the worst --- unless of course you like to read about privately owned jets, earning millions of dollars, winning class action suits that bring in billions (yes, I'm not exaggerating), fast cars, and slimy lawyers. The relationship aspect is at the beginning and end of the book. My suggestion is to read the first three chapters and then skip to the end (unless you enjoy laundry lists of the playthings of the rich).

I haven't read a John Grisham novel in ages, and according to what I remember about the early bestsellers that I read, (The Firm, The Pelican Brief, and The Client), The King of Torts doesn't measure up. The beginning was pretty engaging. Clay, the main character, is a public defender and he's assigned a murder case that he's certain to lose. The author brings the reader into the scenes and experiences during this part of the book.
Once the book gets going, though, the characters are superficial to the point of being stereotypes and tropes, and the book becomes a lesson on how torts and class action suits work. It's also a pretty heavy-handed morality lesson. The author superficially sketches out Clay's relationship with his father and his ex-girlfriend. I wasn't really invested emotionally. I didn't care what happened to whom. I did learn a lot about certain aspects of the law, however. A reader who was already familiar with torts and class action suits, or a reader who wasn't interested in learning some of the basics might get pretty bored.

This book sucks + it sounds like it was written by an alpha male that has a podcast

A financially strapped & newly single lawyer finds himself presented with the opportunity of a lifetime to make a quick fortune. Overnight, he is anointed the King of Torts, marking the beginning of his meteoric ascent to wealth & renown. Yet, as history often reveals, riches acquired through dubious means seldom bring peace. Thus commences the gradual unraveling of our protagonist's journey toward his inevitable downfall.