Last week, Grisham’s publishers ran a full-page ad in The New York Times (price tag: $68,166) quoting a Publishers Weekly review that called “The Runaway Jury” “a thriller for people who think.” What on earth must dummies be reading True, Grisham puts op-ed boilerplate in his characters’ mouths: " ‘The numbers are real,’ Nicholas said. ‘…Last year our country spent six billion on medical costs directly related to smoking, and the number goes up each year’." But while Grisham also lets the tobacco boys say their piece, we never wonder who the baddies are. The fat, snarling, tobacco consultant wears “XX Large boxers and black socks,” he’s on his lonely bed like “a beached whale,” is always shadowed by a sinister driver named Jose and uses bribes, blackmail and breakins to get his wicked way. It’s a big secret who the good guys are-Grisham strings this out forever-but we can tell you that they’re young, slender, attractive, “passionate” and that they outfox the baddies with cellular phones, fax machines and canny stock transactions.
Nobody expects Grisham to be writing “Bleak House,” but even by the more modest standards of popular fiction, “The Runaway jury” doesn’t deliver much for your entertainment dollar. You keep turning the pages to watch the titillating spectacle of an utterly corrupted legal system, and because there’s always some shoe about to drop. But the characters seem to be waiting to be brought to life by movie actors (though there’s no film deal so far). One is “buttoned-up and quite starched,” another is “a loud and hearty soul”; women meant to be attractive are “cute.” And some shoes never do drop. The baddies find out that one juror had an abortion her husband doesn’t know about, but they don’t get around to putting the anticipated squeeze on her. A more conscientious writer would either tie up or snip off this loose end. But why should Grisham bother? Like Big Tobacco, he has plenty of customers hooked.
