From the Sunday Times and New York Times bestselling author comes a new legal thriller about a man who might be the most criminal sitting judge in American history.
As an investigator for the Florida Board on Judicial Conduct, Lacy Stoltz sees plenty of corruption among the men and women elected to the bench. In The Whistler, she took on a crime syndicate that was paying millions to a crooked judge. Now, in The Judge’s List, the crimes are even worse. The man hiding behind the black robe is not taking bribes – but he may be taking lives.
The Judge’s List – you don’t want to be on it.
This is a phenomenal new legal thriller from international bestseller John Grisham, returning to his writing roots after the (excellent) basketball novel Sooley earlier this year (he really is prolific).
We first met protagonist Lacy Stoltz in The Whistler, however, you don’t need to have read the first book in the series to enjoy this; The Judge’s List reads as a standalone.
The premise of this book is compelling and the delivery gripping. Lacy is approached by a Jeri Crosby who claims a sitting judge murdered her father twenty years earlier. What follows is not a who-dunnit but rather a smart game of cat-and-mouse. The reader knows the judge is guilty of not only that murder but many others. Lacy’s investigation into this picks up, and she suspects he’s a serial killer and that numerous cold cases can be linked back to him. But the judge is an intelligent sociopath, and he turns the investigation on its head as his focus falls on Lacy.
The fact is no one writes drama like Grisham. Over 350+ million copies of his books have sold, in forty-five languages, and nine have been turned into blockbuster films. The Judge’s List is true to form, with enough twists and turns to warrant a trip to the chiropractor afterwards. It takes a well-crafted story to deliver in this way, despite the reader knowing who the killer is, and Grisham knows his craft. The plotting is perfect, and he drives the story relentlessly forward, keeping you hooked and flipping pages until the very end.
Grisham fans will be more than satisfied with The Judge’s List, but for those readers who are yet to discover the entertaining escapism of a Grisham novel, this is the perfect place to start.
I relied on this review to my detriment when deciding to proceed with reading “The Judge’s List” even though I hadn’t read “The Whistler.” While it is true that “The Judge’s List” is a standalone from the perspective that the reader can understand it completely without having read the earlier book, “The Judge’s List” gives away so much of the plot of its predecessor (even though there’s no need to do so) that it ruins the suspense for the earlier work. By all means read “The Judge’s List” first if you have no interest in “The Whistler,” but if you do intend to read both, then do so in order.