{"id":35664,"date":"2026-09-09T12:40:32","date_gmt":"2026-09-09T17:40:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/?p=35664"},"modified":"2026-09-08T10:49:40","modified_gmt":"2026-09-08T15:49:40","slug":"book-report-the-runaway-jury-by-john-grisham-1996","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/2026\/09\/09\/book-report-the-runaway-jury-by-john-grisham-1996\/","title":{"rendered":"Book Report: The Runaway Jury<\/em> by John Grisham (1996)"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"BookI mentioned after reading Bastion of Darkness<\/a><\/em> last month that I had only one book left from my son’s birthday present<\/a> of three paperbacks. This was the final one of the trio, not the trilogy. He got me two John Grisham legal thrillers (The Judge’s List<\/a><\/em> being the other) and the third book of an R.A. Salvatore fantasy trilogy (Bastion of Darkness<\/em>). It’s a twee little goal, to have read all three of the gift books, but my life is made of twee goals.<\/p>\n

This book, pretty early in Grisham’s career (he’s still writing, but I’m not sure that his current books are quite as boffo as his earlier work, but I haven’t been paying attention to the best seller lists). In it, a lawsuit against a tobacco company goes to trial in Biloxi, Mississippi, and both the plantiff’s pool of bought-in lawyers but especially the defense funded tobacco companies and their undefeated fixer go to work on the jury to persuade or otherwise convince them, against judge’s orders, of course, to vote their way. They run into an unexpected fly in the ointment as one member of the jury, a former law school student, is apparently a drifter who has found is way into the jury pools of many such trials, but this is the first time he’s been seated, and he and a beautiful, also seemingly pastless, woman have their own agenda.<\/p>\n

So it’s 550 paperback pages of the maneuvering with the agenda of the two coming into focus at the very end. I found it interesting for several reasons: I have been to Biloxi (and know how to pronounce it) in the time period when the book takes place; I have family nearby to this day, and a couple from church have just announced they’re relocating there; and recently, a trial has captured the headlines with a holdout juror.<\/p>\n

A pretty good read, albeit a little long for my taste–it’s probably slightly less daunting in hardback. <\/p>\n

But you know what it brings to mind? In the middle 1990s, we almost had a subgenre of legal fiction dedicated to lawsuits against tobacco companies, ainna? They’re still around, though, not bankrupted or banned as they hoped in the 1990s. Are there such legal thrillers about lawsuits against tech companies or social media companies? If not, why not? To be honest, as I mentioned, I don’t follow contemporary fiction much. Maybe the best seller lists are rife with them and I just don’t know it. Or is it something more sinister<\/em>?<\/p>\n

At any rate, I’ve got a copy of Skipping Christmas<\/em> around here somewhere which I might read eventually, but I’m not jonesing for more legal thrillers of this type. Did Grisham and Turow really reshape the landscape in the last bit of the 20th century legal fiction world? I mean, Perry Mason was big, but that was pretty episodic and formulaic. Did these guys mark a sea change? It’s a rhetorical question of a sort. I’m not digging to find out.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I mentioned after reading Bastion of Darkness last month that I had only one book left from my son’s birthday present of three paperbacks. This was the final one of the trio, not the trilogy. He got me two John Grisham legal thrillers (The Judge’s List being the other) and the third book of an […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3334,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20,11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-35664","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-book-report","category-books"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35664","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3334"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=35664"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35664\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":35665,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35664\/revisions\/35665"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=35664"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=35664"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=35664"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}