The Summons
by John Grisham
Doubleday, February, 2002.
Hardcover, 357 pages.
ISBN: 0385503822
Ray Atlee is a college law professor at the University
of Virginia. His father
is a beloved judge in his birthplace, the
small town of Clanton,
Mississippi, and his brother is a drug abuser and
drunk who can't hold
a job. Ray receives a letter from his father, who he
hasn't spoken to in years, informing him that he is
very ill and needs to come back to town to discuss
his will. Unfortunately, when
Ray arrives at home to visit his father he finds him already
dead.
Later, he discovers hidden stacks of money in his father's house
-- nearly 3 million dollars worth. The will only left him and his
brother a few thousand dollars, which was left in a bank
account and the house itself. So, where
did all this money come from and who else knows about it?
Was it even legally earned? Ray is forced to deal with
this mysterious money, his problematic brother and the
locals while trying to figure out what to do with the
money and who to trust.
John Grisham, the bestselling author of exciting
legal thrillers such as
The Firm, The Testament and
The Rainmaker returns to his roots
with his latest novel.
In
The Summons, Grisham introduces Ray Atlee,
who thought he would be left with a pittance from
his stubborn father, but instead finds three million dollars
of unexplained cash in his father's house. Ray is an
appealing soul, who struggles with his decisions about what
to do with all the money. If he reports it, then he'll have to
pay taxes on it and turn over half of the money to his brother,
who will surely waste the money on drugs. If he
doesn't report it, then someone could turn him in. And in any event,
someone who knows about the money could
come after him.
Grisham's latest novel starts slowly, almost too slowly for
a Grisham novel, but really builds as Ray begins
exploring casinos as a source of his father's mysterious
cash. The information about how the FBI can trace money and
the inner-workings of the casinos along the
Mississippi river add interest to the novel -- readers will definitely
learn something along the way.
The Summons is a return to legal
thrillers, after a brief departure to more literary works
with
A Painted
House. Fortunately for Grisham legal thriller fans, he is
under contract to write at least two more legal thrillers.
The Summons is available for purchase on
Amazon.com
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This review was published in the March, 2002 of The Internet Writing Journal.
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