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John Grisham is branching out into the young adult field. This book appears to be aimed at the younger end of that market as there is none of the somewhat raunchy down-to-earth language of Robert Muchamore's CHERUB series or the fast-paced action of Anthony Horowitz's Alex Rider books. Instead, Grisham adopts a much more sedentary pace. Theodore Boone is the only child of two lawyers. His father specialises in real estate and his mother deals with divorce cases. Theo is more of a generalist, but with definite leanings towards the ups and downs of life in a courtroom. He advises his fellow pupils, and even some of his teachers, on their problems and when his home town gets a high profile murder case it's Theo who uses his friendship with Judge Gantry to get his classmates ringside seats for the first day of the trial. It's clear from the beginning that the prosecution's case is circumstantial at best, and as the trial progresses it looks increasingly likely that Pete Duffy will be found not guilty of the murder of his wife. Surprise witnesses are both a cliché and a legal fiction, as Theo is at pains to explain to his classmates, but when Theo finds himself in possession of some surprising information, he's also thrown into a moral dilemma and needs to find a way of telling the truth while still protecting the interests of a witness to what really happened on the day Duffy's wife was killed. Even for its target audience, this can only be described as a light read and it's certainly not one for thrill-seekers. Grisham uses various devices to make the intricacies of trial procedure clear to the audience, usually in the form of Theodore being called on to explain matters to his classmates and as a result, the book is fairly heavy on exposition, which contributes to a lingering feeling that not much happens. To make matters worse, Theo's personality doesn't exactly sparkle, which is a shame, but that's something that shows the potential to develop in later books, as this is clearly the start of a series, but whether readers will stick him long enough for that to happen is another matter entirely. As an opener, this didn't pack much a punch and any of Grisham's usual readers who pick the book up thinking they are going to read a scaled-down version of his adult courtroom dramas will be disappointed. § Linda Wilson is a writer, and retired solicitor, with an interest in archaeology and cave art, who now divides her time between England and France.
Reviewed by Linda Wilson, May 2011
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Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)
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