The Runaway Jury by John Grisham (Review)

Genre: Legal Fiction 
Released: 1996
550 pages

About the Book:

Every jury has a leader, and the verdict belongs to him. In Biloxi, Mississippi, a landmark tobacco trial with hundreds of millions of dollars at stake begins routinely, then swerves mysteriously off course.

The jury is behaving strangely, and at least one juror is convinced he's being watched. Soon they have to be sequestered. Then a tip from an anonymous young woman suggests she is able to predict the jurors' increasingly odd behavior.

Is the jury somehow being manipulated, or even controlled? If so, by whom? And, more importantly, why?

My Rating & Thoughts:    ⭐⭐⭐

There was really no one to root for. We are following a tobacco trial with a jury consultant who is trying to set up the jury in their favor and then a member of the jury who is trying to sway jury votes their way. The lengths that both parties go to are underhanded and manipulating. We don't really know the motive of one character's until pretty much the end. It has a political feel with the tobacco trial, tobacco is addictive and hazardous to health, but is the tobacco company at fault if people don't quit. The middle was a bit slow and a but boring at times, but the last 100 pages had me fully invested to know how the case wrapped and what happened with the jury. This book was written in the late 90s and it hasn't really aged well as some things are a bit dated. There were some descriptions included about personal visits for the jury members that I don't think were needed or added to the story. In addition to these scenes, there is a bit of language that does not make this a clean read.

(I purchased my copy of this book; opinions expressed 

in this review are my honest opinion and completely my own.)

Other books from this author that I have reviewed:  

   

The Litigators

The Innocent Man

The Summons

The Testament

The Whistler

Bleachers