Review: The Widow

The Widow by John Grisham
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Almost stopped reading this--was on page 125 and it was slow and boring. Husband assured me it got better so I persisted. It was drilled into the reader in those first pages that Simon Latch is a small time lawyer in a small time town with a marriage falling apart. He also has a gambling habit, by the way. He finds himself approached by an 80+ widow with oodles of money who wants a will and he says a chance to make a bundle as her lawyer. He gets close, takes her to lunch, writes a will that will assure him of large fees upon her death--greed overrides his normally upstanding practice of writing simple wills for simple people. By the time she dies and her autopsy reveals she was poisoned with thallium while in the hospital recovering from a car accident and Simon is arrested and charged the scenario is firmly established.
Luckily, Simon has a former sweetheart who is now a Special Agent with the FBI--comes in handy. His gambling connections also help out. And he knows a local criminal defense attorney who believes in his innocence. The rest of the next 370 pages or so are spent with his indictment, trial, time in prison, independent investigation with side bars of interaction with soon to be ex-wife and three kids, other family he's trying to borrow from and a hippie hacker and her imprisoned boyfriend. ect. The last 10 pages are the full reveal, which I figured out during the trial and a ride into the sunset. Typical Grisham--rambles on for over 300 pages and then decides he's had enough and ties it all up in two chapters covering the requisite 400 page requirement for publication.

I like Grisham but if he mentions Simon's drink of choice--bourbon and ginger ale --one more time I will scream. I assume it is rot gut with cheap no name ginger ale. Somebody has got to teach this guy how to drink bourbon, for heaven's sake--or else send him to jail for life, please.

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