Rogue Lawyer

Grisham’s antihero defense attorney, Sebastian Rand, who narrates this novel, handles cases no other lawyer would touch with a 10-foot habeas corpus. More obsessed by justice than legal process or friendship or social amenities, he bends the law to its breaking point, keeps to himself, and travels in a custom-built bulletproof van driven by a mainly silent ex-client he calls Partner. He’s cold, contemptuous, and hard to like. Reader Deakins doesn’t ignore this, but includes a smidgen more humanity than the author has put on the page, a welcome addition—not that his version of the lawyer is warm and fuzzy. Rand, after all, is dealing with a broken judicial system, described by Grisham with an insider’s knowledge and read with eye-opening clarity by Deakins. He also adds an aural sense of continuity to a work that is more a collection of cases, won or lost, than a fully constructed novel. A Doubleday hardcover. (Oct.)