The Last Juror

John Grisham...back to his roots and at his finest.

The Last Juror by John Grisham

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I'm going to get on my soap box for a moment here. And this little soap box really isn't about the story. Consider yourself warned. When one listens to an audio book, the reader really makes ALL the difference. Last year I listened to Juliet by Anne Fortier. I was a bit harsh in my review of certain aspects of the story, and I think a very big part of the harshness was related to the reader and the way she voiced the twin sister of the heroine. It grated on my nerves so so so much. Had I known it would bother me so much, I would have opted to read the book instead of listen to it.

On the opposite end of the spectrum is Jim Dale, the voice of the audio series for Harry Potter, who, in my opinion, is brilliant almost always (once in a while his Hermione is a bit much, but there are soooo many characters he must read with so many different accents and he does the voices so well). After having read that series more than once, I didn't think I would love listening to them the way that I did, but oh they were so good just because having Jim Dale tell me a story was perfect.

Very few readers match up to Mr. Dale's talents, but Michael Beck might come close. All that to say that I loved listening to him tell me this story. I've grown fond of listening to books while completing chores, and this was a great book to listen to.

Enough of that, however, and on to the review.

I wouldn't call The Last Juror a "thriller" in the traditional sense of the word, at least as it applies to Grisham and stories like A Time to Kill or The Firm. In fact, the main character isn't even a lawyer. Instead, he is a news man who owns the small town weekly newspaper in Ford County, Mississippi. Willie Traynor is an unlikely hero, but even with his Southern upbringing in a struggling post-segregation South, he is able to draw his weekly readers into a completely new type of newspaper than the one they are used to.

The novel has two plots, really: the story of a unique black family, the Ruffins, who adopt Willie as one of their own and the contrasting story of Danny Padgitt and the entire Padgitt clan who are all up to no good. Much of Mr. Traynor's paper is dedicated to the tales of both families, and I really like the way that the plot of the novel focuses on both threads through Traynor's news gathering.

This book is, in many ways, classically Grisham, even if it doesn't have the fast paced thrills of The Pelican Brief. I think that's because he's gone back to the South here. Grisham is a regional writer; it's one of his many strengths, and so generally I've really enjoyed those of his novels set in the South because he knows the people, the culture, the dialect. I always walk away feeling like I've somehow been in Mississippi or Alabama or Louisiana after I read one of his books.

That is why I especially liked this...because it reminded me of why I read Grisham so voraciously in the early days of his career. I appreciate that he has branched out, but it's always good to see an author come back home.

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