The Rainmaker

• On The Rainmaker, he gets back to those original traits. Rudy Baylor is a young lawyer who looses his job with a promising firm and has no other prospects. He worked at a bar where shady characters frequented and the owner who likes him hooks him up with a small law firm. It is a less than scrupulous firm, with an ambulance chasing attitude. Rudy is schooled in the art of hanging around hospitals from Deck, a squirrelly little guy.
  
  In the meantime he moves into an apartment over the garage of a lonely old widow, Miss Birdie. He tends to her yard and starts working with her on her will. He also gets a case for a young man whose dying and his health insurance company refuses to pay for his medical treatments. While hanging around the hospital, he meets Kelly, who turns out to be a victim of spousal abuse. He gets involved with her while working on his cases. The case against the insurance company is a classic David vs. Goliath scenario.
  
  Mr. Grisham expertly weaves all these plot lines together and keeps the pages turning with bright, vivid and entertaining writing. The Rainmaker is the best book of his career.
  

• I am actually surprised a Grisham book is going to make my Top 5 list of all time favorites. Oh, but it is. This was a fantastic book. The characters and plot were so well developed, it was really tough putting this book down. The story is typical Grisham. A young lawyer graduates from Memphis State. He has no money and no job. In order to make ends meet, he is forced to work for the sleaziest lawyer in town.
  
  But he takes with him a case against an insurance company that, if he gets lucky, could mean millions in punitive damages. His luck is not in his favor when the sleazy lawyer disappears and leaves Rudy and a paralegal named Deck, to start up an office of their own and take the case against one of the toughest law firms in Memphis. Grisham does the layman justice by explaining law in a way anyone can understand. I always take something away from a Grisham book. The action does not stop until the end of this one.
  
  And I have to say I was surprised but definitely satisfied with the ending. A must read!