John Grisham’s latest offering, The Rooster Bar perfectly encapsulates his desire to let his writing evolve and keep his content current, never letting his high standards falter. Fans, new and returning, will be treated to a classic Grisham legal thriller that hits all the desired marks, but punctuates the expected with the fresh to create a novel well worth reading, indeed a perfect stocking filler.
With such classics as The Firm, The Pelican Brief, The Rainmaker and, of course, A Time to Kill under his belt, it’s suffice to say Grisham knows what he’s doing. Always eager to keep his finger or his pen on the pulse, his latest subject matter could not be more topical. For this novel he tackles the student debt crisis and its associated scam operations. Grisham himself describes the central issue as “very timely, especially when used in the context of for-profit colleges”. He also notes that in the current economic climate, “student debt is at a crisis point”. — a very real reality for the three law students at the centre of the novel, Mark, Todd and Zola, who make the risky decision to drop out of their for-profit law school upon learning of the financial scam it is tied to. The titular pub is Grisham’s version of Central Perk, it comes to act as the location for morally and legally questionable activities of his characters, desperate to use what little legal savvy they have to climb their mountain of debt.
In his latest offering Grisham paints a marvelously detailed literary picture where no character building stone is left unturned. Less than 10 pages in it becomes immediately clear why Grisham’s books have been given the Hollywood treatment with such re-occurring success. Every set, every shot and every character is already perfectly detailed in the pages, and this is just him getting started — once he’s set the scene he begins to fill it with the legal/illegal drama and fraught tension that he is so loved for.
The novel’s basis in financial facts means that the writing can be a little exposition heavy at times. But it is carried with masterful essence swiftly from chapter to chapter, character to character, through Grisham’s stylistic choice of a decidedly upbeat, almost bouncy tone of writing which makes for an easy and enjoyable read.
