311 / 424
GAZETTE
B O O K
R E V I E W S
NOVEMBER 1995
The Rainmaker
By John Grisham. Published by
Century, London, 1995; hardback,
IR£16.50.
Are lawyers good people?
John
Grisham,
the legal story teller,
probably the most popular author in
the world, would likely concede that a
small minority of them are. His five
previous books (
A Time to Kill, The
Firm, The Pelican Brief, The Client
and
The Chamber)
have all been best
sellers worldwide and have sold over
6 0 million copies in the English
language.
John Grisham
was a lawyer from
Mississippi, who discovered that
writing about lawyers opposing
racism, the Mafia, corporate thuggery,
devious cops and district attornies,
and the death penalty, can generate
more money than actually practising
as a lawyer. For Grisham, as long as
most of his lawyer characters are
characterised as short on ethical
principles and greedy, the individual
lawyer fighting the uphill battle for
justice and the just cause - can be the
heroic subject of each o f his books.
The Rainmaker
is Grisham's latest and
arguably his best yet. It is written in
the first person and probably reflects
more than his earlier books why he
feels being a writer critically
commenting on the American legal
profession is more fulfiling than
actually being a liberal, humane,
crusading lawyer in the Southern
United States. A good example of that
criticism is the following reference to
the big firm lawyer character:
. . Drummond bills two-hundred
fifty bucks an hour for office work,
three-fifty when in court. Th a t 's
well below New Yo rk and
Washington standards, but it's very
high for Memphis. He has good
reason to talk slow and repeat
himself. It pays to be thorough, even
tedious, when billing at that rate."
His liberal, crusading streak is
demonstrated by his
Rainmaker
hero
reasoning as follows:
" My model juror is young and black
with at least a high school
education. It's ancient wisdom that
blacks make better plaintiff's jurors.
They feel for the underdog and
distrust white corporate America.
Who can blame t h em?"
The Rainmaker is about a law student,
Rudy Baylor,
who loses a j o b offered
to him in a Memphis law firm before
he starts due to it being taken over by
a larger firm, just before his
Tennessee bar examination. Heavily
in debt, Rudy struggles on and
becomes a lawyer, with his first trial
in court a 'bad faith' case against an
insurance company which has rejected
a health insurance claim in respect of
a boy dying of leukaemia who would
probably have been saved if he could
have had, in time, a very expensive
bone marrow transplant from his twin
brother. The insurance company is
represented by the big law firm who
took over Rudy 's would-be employer,
which enables his anger at the
insurance c ompany 's treatment o f his
client to be also directed at the big
firm - thus providing a convenient
vehicle for the author to engage in
criticism of the
'modus operandi'
of
the large impersonal practice
defending by all means, fair or foul,
the unmeritorious client.
At the end o f the trial which is the
central theme of the book, Rudy (aka
Grisham?) reflects: " R i ght now,
though, I 'm sick at work, I want to get
on a plane and find a b e a c h" - perhaps
the tired wish o f many trial lawyers
the world over, but only capable of
being fulfiled or afforded by a small
minority o f them, perhaps like
Grisham himself.
John Grisham is a very good story
teller, even if you feel his heroes are
what the author would really wish
himself to be. Irish solicitors and
barristers can enjoy the book,
comforted by the 'atlantical' distance
between what allegedly happens in the
practice of law in America and what,
of course on a much higher moral
plane(!), happens here.
Michael V. O'Mahony
The Law of Extradition in
the United Kingdom
By
Michael Forde.
Published by
Round Hall Press. Second Edition
(1995) 261pp; hardbook, £42.50.
The law on the extradition (surrender)
of persons from one jurisdiction to
another has undergone significant
change in both the United Kingdom
and Ireland in the last decade. Change
reflects varying political situations
arising from, though not limited to,
the Anglo-Irish Agreement of
November 1985, the "political offence
exception" (one of the most
controversial aspects) of extradition
law, and the far-reaching Convention
on the Suppression of Terrorism
(Council of Europe, 2 7 . 1 . 1 9 7 7 ). The
Convention, signed by all 21 member
states of the Council (including
Ireland), specifies offences not be
regarded as or connected with a
political offence or inspired by
political motives. This effectively
restates earlier decisions in cases such
as
Quinn v Wren [1985] I.R. 322
which decided that members of
organisations dedicated to
overthrowing the State by unlawful
means could not claim the benefit of
the political offence exception
[Section 5 0 (Irish) Extradition Act,
1965]. Procedural changes reflect the
need for a uniform system of
287