Runaway Jury [Paperback]

John Grisham (Author)

Product Details

• Paperback
• Publisher: Dell Publishing Co.. Inc. (2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0099457881
• ISBN-13: 978-0099457886
• ASIN: B001KTP8W0
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (444 customer reviews)

More About the Author

Long before his name became synonymous with the modern legal thriller, John Grisham was working 60-70 hours a week at a small Southaven, Mississippi law practice, squeezing in time before going to the office and during courtroom recesses to work on his hobby--writing his first novel. Born on February 8, 1955 in Jonesboro, Arkansas, to a construction worker and a homemaker, John Grisham as a child dreamed of being a professional baseball player. Realizing he didn't have the right stuff for a pro career, he shifted gears and majored in accounting at Mississippi State University. After graduating from law school at Ole Miss in 1981, he went on to practice law for nearly a decade in Southaven, specializing in criminal defense and personal injury litigation. One day at the DeSoto County courthouse, Grisham overheard the harrowing testimony of a twelve-year-old rape victim and was inspired to start a novel exploring what would have happened if the girl's father had murdered her assailants. Getting up at 5 a.m. every day to get in several hours of writing time before heading off to work, Grisham spent three years on A Time to Kill and finished it in 1987. Initially rejected by many publishers, it was eventually bought by Wynwood Press, who gave it a modest 5,000 copy printing and published it in June 1988.That might have put an end to Grishams hobby. However, he had already begun his next book, and it would quickly turn that hobby into a new full-time career. When he sold the film rights to The Firm to Paramount Pictures for $600,000, Grisham suddenly became a hot property among publishers, and book rights were bought by Doubleday. Spending 47 weeks on The New York Times bestseller list, The Firm became the bestselling novel of 1991.The successes of The Pelican Brief, which hit number one on the New York Times bestseller list, and The Client, which debuted at number one, confirmed Grisham's reputation as the master of the legal thriller. Grisham's success even renewed interest in A Time to Kill, which was republished in hardcover by Doubleday and then in paperback by Dell. This time around, it was a bestseller. Since first publishing A Time to Kill in 1988, Grisham has written one novel a year (his other books are The Firm, The Pelican Brief, The Client, The Chamber, The Rainmaker, The Runaway Jury, The Partner, The Street Lawyer, The Testament, The Brethren, A Painted House, Skipping Christmas, The Summons, The King of Torts, Bleachers, The Last Juror, The Broker, Playing for Pizza, and The Appeal) and all of them have become international bestsellers. There are currently over 225 million John Grisham books in print worldwide, which have been translated into 29 languages. Nine of his novels have been turned into films (The Firm, The Pelican Brief, The Client, A Time to Kill, The Rainmaker, The Chamber, A Painted House, The Runaway Jury, and Skipping Christmas), as was an original screenplay, The Gingerbread Man.

Photo credit Maki Galimberti

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

24 of 25 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Grisham's Study in Characterization, April 2, 2000

By 

Andrea Egger, author of Grave Accusations (Gallup, NM USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Runaway Jury (Mass Market Paperback)

This was an extremely enjoyable book, but it wasn't exactly a mystery as to what was happening or going to happen, as are most of Grisham's other books. I found the most entertaining part to be the way the characters interacted, and usually it's the courtroom pizazz and the plot twists and turns with Grisham. In this book, you can see what's coming -- but it almost makes you enjoy the book all the more because it makes you laugh at the establishment that's getting duped, or actually participating in being duped. Grisham could never write a bad book, and it appears in this one he focused more on people and their frailties, greed and humanity. I loved the scenes between our hero and the judge. AND the way the hero juror bosses everyone around. I'm not sure too many jurors in America know the power they really have in cases. As a police reporter, I've seen far too many jurors be afraid of the judge and in awe of the attorneys. Too many don't understand that they, as jurors, truly run the show and ARE the judges of the case.

17 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars The Verdict is In, October 26, 2003

By 

Brian Quinn (Delafield, Wisconsin) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Runaway Jury (Mass Market Paperback)

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.

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Solid Grisham effort, a little preachy, great end suspense, November 11, 2002

By 

Gerald M. Bull "Jerry Bull" (Fairview, TN United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Runaway Jury (Mass Market Paperback)

We tend to categorize Grisham’s novels into three groups: fast-paced thrillers, like the “Pelican Brief” and “The Firm”; slow paced dramas, like “The Chamber” and “A Painted House”; and a middle group of “message stories” that mix the characteristics of the other two. “Jury” falls into that third class, featuring mostly courtroom drama but with the intrigue of jury tampering and manipulation thrown in for good measure. It’s also a bit of a “preachy” book as Grisham uses some 500 pages to tell us how bad smoking is (like we didn’t know?). The story deals with a wrongful death case brought by a smoker’s widow against a big tobacco company. While the timely (especially in 1996) premise gets our early attention, there’s probably more details than anybody ever wanted about jury selection and processing, which slows the story down quite a bit. To many readers, the outcome will be worth the wait, as the latter part of the book bristles with suspense.

This is the author’s seventh book of (now) 14. To us it is neither his best nor worst, but a very typical, reasonably good entry in this best-selling genre Grisham practically invented (apologies to Perry Mason!).