Tampering with the jury in smoke-filled rooms

LET me nail my colours to the mast from the start up his I have not been a fan John Grisham's multi selling books. I found in them a certain woodenness of style and a written to formula sameness that invariably failed to hold my attention. And character development was about as meaningful as cardboard cut outs in those pop up books we treasured so much in the dear, dead days of our youth.

However, my conversion on the road to Damascus has taken place. With his latest opus, The Runaway Jury, he has thoroughly beguiled, excited and won me over to his side. I read the book in one sitting, burning up midnight and dog star hours, emerging red eyed but echoing his praises.

Not that the scenario is an original one. In fact, it is the age old one of the little person in this case, little people there are two of them taking on the might of the big guys, playing them at their own game, and winning. Do I hear it for David against Goliath? Give the boys a great big hand.

The corporate bullyboys here are the tobacco companies, in particular one called Pynex, which is being sued by the widow of a man called Wood, who died of lung cancer after smoking four packs of their product a day for 30 years. Lined up for the defence is a glee club of lawyers led by the venerable Durwood Cable popularly known as Sir Durr a "buttoned up and quite starched" specimen, but as shrewd as a secondhand car salesman while opposing him is Wendall Rohr, "loud and gregarious and gaudy", backed up by his gaggle of lowing legal people.

The setting for the trial is Biloxi, Mississippi not that this matters a whit anywhere in the good old US of A would have done. Before we get into the nitty gritty of proceedings, the jury has to be selected. And this is where Mr Grisham grabs our attention and, ferret like, holds on for the remainder of his narrative.

Obviously knowing his stuff, he leads us through the intricacies of jury selection as sure footedly as a wolf stalking a sheep, showing the why and the wherefore of one person being chosen and another being "bumped". The tobacco companies, fearful of one conviction leading to an opening of the flood gates, have hired the aptly named Rankin Fitch to head their behind the scenes murky operations, setting him up with an inexhaustible fund of money and a legion of intelligence operatives.

Fitch is a wheeler dealer and a veteran of many such trials, all of which have been won by the plaintiff in this case, the tobacco companies. He has achieved these results by a stealthy process of jury tampering, and sees no reason why the same methods won't work in this case.

He has reckoned without the interference of one Nicholas Easter and his beautiful, if ruthless, ally, the girl merely known as Marice they just have to be played by Tom Cruise and Holly Hunter in the film version. Easter manages to get himself on to the jury panel and, by a process of bullying and cajoling, brings them under his direction and power. And to show the judge that he means business, he stages a demonstration early in the trial, causing his fellow jurors to stand en masse and recite the Oath of Allegiance to a dumbfounded courtroom.

Juggling superbly with his twin track story line the progress of the trial itself parallelled by Fitch's efforts to discover the true identities of Easter and Marice Grisham holds the suspense on a knife edge, disguising any little incredulities in his plot by the incidence of events and the velocity of his pace.

In the end, we are left to cheer for the underdog, while having learned a lot about jurisprudence, the harmful effects of smoking, the conniving that goes on in legal circles, and the art of one upmanship. Buy this one for summer reading, certainly but don't be surprised if you stay up all night devouring it.

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