'The Appeal' Has its Own Appeal Right Now

Review of THE APPEAL (Random House Audio 2008)
By guest blogger Star Lawrence
Author, John Grisham; read by Michael Beck

With the economy crumbling around our poor little ears (have you priced the cost of going bankrupt lately? Trust me—you can’t afford to even go broke!), this David & Goliath story has magnetic charm. I could not wait to get back to it and click on the CD player, despite the slow Southern accents and occasionally blah-blah-blah Grisham style.

David is a Ma & Pa law firm in Hattiesburg, Mississippi, representing some downtrodden and dead cancer victims in a nearby "Cancer County" that had been drinking death water poisoned by an evil chemical company run by a Wall Street billionaire (natch).

OK, corny setup. But wait.

As the poor lawyers are continually harassed by mustache-twisting bankers wanting to call in their loans, the evil billionaire uses brute spending power to stack the deck in the state supreme court, which will be ruling on the huge verdict the Hattiesburg jury delivered in favor of the cancer victims. Why not just get a sympathetic justice elected and dump the woman who still had in interest in the "little guy"?

Of course, they find a family-first type who goes to church a few times a week and push him out there.

But what I wanted to know was—will the rich keep getting richer? See? I am a romantic!

I won't tell you, although I did not love the deus ex machina Grisham came up with at the end. Ever feel like calling an author and yelling?

The reader Michael Beck is a favorite of mine and does the accents well without overplaying them into Foghorn T. Leghorn territory.

Overall, this was a disk-flipper (my version of a page-turner). But my fists are still clenched. And you will see why.

Star Lawrence is a writer in Chandler, AZ, and can be reached at jkellaw@aol.com. She's a frequent contributor to The Book Grrl and her audio reviews also appear on http://chandlerazoo.blogspot.com.