The Judge's List
A Novel
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4.0 • 465 Ratings
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- $13.99
Publisher Description
#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • John Grisham returns to Florida, where The Whistler’s Lacy Stoltz takes on a cold case that reveals a judge’s darkest secrets.
“One of the best crime reads of the year . . . a world-class shocker, worth staying up all night to finish.”—The Wall Street Journal
In The Whistler, Lacy Stoltz investigated a corrupt judge who was taking millions in bribes from a crime syndicate. She put the criminals away, but only after being attacked and nearly killed. Three years later, and approaching forty, she is tired of her work for the Florida Board on Judicial Conduct and ready for a change.
Then she meets a mysterious woman who is so frightened she uses a number of aliases. Jeri Crosby’s father was murdered twenty years earlier in a case that remains unsolved and that has grown stone cold. But Jeri has a suspect whom she has become obsessed with and has stalked for two decades. Along the way, she has discovered other victims.
The man Jeri holds responsible for all these deaths is brilliant, patient, and always one step ahead of law enforcement. He is the most cunning of all serial killers. He knows forensics, police procedure, and most important: he knows the law.
He is a judge, in Florida—under Lacy’s jurisdiction.
But the man keeps a record of all his victims and targets, people unlucky enough to have crossed his path and wronged him in some way. Lacy must work to take him down, while somehow keeping her name off his list.
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
A dogged investigator faces the toughest judge on the bench in this intense legal thriller from the master of the genre, John Grisham. Lacy Stoltz, an investigator for the Florida Board on Judicial Conduct, is no stranger to risking her life. After all, exposing powerful criminals is her job. But when she meets Jeri Crosby, whose law professor father has been murdered, the danger level ramps up. All the clues point to the victim’s former student—who is now a sitting judge. Once again, Grisham’s insider knowledge of the legal system makes everything about this tense story feel very real. Lacy’s analytical skills and strong-minded personality make her a heroine we never stop rooting for.
Customer Reviews
Judge’s List
I really like Grisham novels and have read most of them. They are easy reads not too violent clearly written and very clever. He is an accomplished writer but not a great writer when he wrote Painted House he showed what he could really do. Judges List is not memorable just enjoyable for the moment. I love them and leave them. Not great literature but good to pass the time. I wish he would write to his potential and work on his dialogue as he relies too much on telling the story to rush it along and therefore misses so many opportunities. His descriptions are concise and adequate he captures your interest and rarely disappoints. Very good but never great. I will read the next and the next and forever a fan.
Promising plot
Mr. Grisham is obviously a very find, detailed oriented writer whose characters are mostly 3 dimensional. However, the resolution of the plot and antagonist in this work feels unsatisfactory and anticlimactic. There were opportunities to create suspense that were not explored and the shocking behavior of one of the main characters who helped lure another character into the hands of a killer, was never addressed. The resolution also depended too much on a simple ploy. There also an enormous amount of repetition regarding one characters pursuit and the way it affected her life. The character displayed a good deal of disregard for the other characters, culminating in a kind of betrayal that the victim survived really by chance. Not satisfying in that regard..
Great work!
Outstanding story, once I started reading I couldn’t put it down. I have read the majority of John Grisham novels and this one stands out as one of his best works!