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    The Appeal
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    The Appeal
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    The Appeal
    Audiobook12 hours

    The Appeal

    Written by John Grisham

    Narrated by Michael Beck

    3.5/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this audiobook

    In a crowded courtroom in Mississippi, a jury returns a shocking verdict against a chemical company accused of dumping toxic waste into a small town's water supply, causing the worst "cancer cluster" in history. The company appeals to the Mississippi Supreme Court, whose nine justices will one day either approve the verdict or reverse it.

    Who are the nine? How will they vote? Can one be replaced before the case is ultimately decided?

    The chemical company is owned by a Wall Street predator named Carl Trudeau, and Mr. Trudeau is convinced the Court is not friendly enough. With judicial elections looming, he decides to try to purchase himself a seat on the Court. The cost is a few million dollars, a drop in the bucket for a billionaire like Mr. Trudeau. Through an intricate web of conspiracy and deceit, his political operatives recruit a young, unsuspecting candidate. They finance him, manipulate him, market him, and mold him into a potential Supreme Court justice. Their Supreme Court justice.

    THE APPEAL is a powerful, timely, and shocking story of political and legal intrigue, a story that will leave listeners unable to think about our electoral process or judicial system in quite the same way ever again.


    From the Compact Disc edition.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherPenguin Random House Audio
    Release dateJan 29, 2008
    ISBN9780739316542
    Unavailable
    The Appeal

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    Reviews for The Appeal

    3.5/5

    1,061 ratings71 reviews

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    • 2/5
      Didn't enjoy this book but it does highlight how corruptive the legal system is.
    • 2/5
      This was a depressing, tedious story that went on too long about a chemical firm's unscrupulous pollution, causing cancer in an entire community. Grisham's apparent intent (spoiler alert) was to frame a situation where big business slid out of its liability for causing death and breaking laws. The real story here was about the egregious election of a supreme court justice. Here was a great theme that should have formed the story: the idiocy of private donations, untraceable to the big business from whence these arrive, influencing which justice sits on the bench. Instead, we, the Readers, are bogged down for over 2/3rds of the novel with scene setting, all to demonstrate that the current American process to fill judicial positions is thoroughly corrupt. In the final author's note, Grisham admits this fact (that election of judges is a war of finances and competing interests with no focus on qualifications or experience.) Perhaps a timely story for me to reread (2017), reflective of the way the 45th president was elected, huh?
    • 4/5
      Whilst not quite as good as The Broker it was still a good tale of litigation, seedy campaign finance and greed. Towards the end you get the feeling how it's going to end however the ending is not quite as expected, which is always nice.
    • 3/5
      A Mississippi town becomes a "cancer cluster" thanks to irresponsible toxic waste dumping by a chemical company that has since pulled up roots in the area. Several high value law suits are filed by small town lawyers, and the initial verdict is a windfall, with many more cases to follow. This is a tale of them getting squashed by big money, big industry, and their lobbying dollars. In orchestrating their success, the chemical company, their egomaniacal owner, and out-of-state political interests combine to rig the appeal from the ground-up, going as far as to arrange the replacement of a potentially sympathetic state supreme court justice with a owned puppet. As he is wont to do, Grisham gives us hope -- the puppet suddenly finds himself in the position of victim when his son suffers brain injury from an ball hit from a metal bat that had been recalled because of safety concerns. But in the end, the puppet masters get what they want, and the reader is just left pissed off that even such a hypothetical situation could conceivably happen. Kudos to Grisham for making it seem so plausible.
    • 3/5
      Complex storyline.
    • 3/5
      The author explores the process of electing judges and how that can be manipulated to determine a judicial outcome. Interesting look at the process, but a little too over the top with bad characters and character development.
    • 4/5
      good book, but a little too realistic with greedy businessmen and con jobs.
    • 3/5
      Grisham tends to write rather formulaic novels, but this one is not like the others. However, I refuse to tell you why as it would spoil the ending. The plot revolves around how big corporations manipulate judicial elections to promulgate their pro-business agendas -- this is a timely novel of political intrigue. What's scary is that is happening every day.
    • 4/5
      I'm a big fan of Grisham and I did enjoy this. It was different and surprising. The bad guys won in this one.
    • 4/5
      A well written book that keep you changing sides for who you want to see come out on top. It's the mark of a good writer who can engage you into both sides. (Spoiler alert) Not the feel-good fairy tale ending that the author seemed to be setting you up for; that would have been too cliche'; but more like reality so kudos there.
    • 5/5
      This book made me question my own political leanings and which party I will likely vote for in the future. I don't know if that was Grisham's intention, but it's a very interesting (and a little sad) book.
    • 5/5
      This was a great read as all of John Grisham's novels are and have been! There were a few there that weren't so great so I stopped reading them and then I recently ran into The Racketeer...and guess what? They are getting back to great! Woo Hoo! I love this author and highly recommend him to anybody who likes lawyer, crime, court and murder books. Like James Patterson (not lawyer, but crime) and Brad Metzer! Both great recommend authors!
    • 4/5
      This is the first Grisham book I ve read for a while. Story is a small town law firm sue a big evil empire. They win and are awarded damages. The big evil empire appeal and are very sneaky. The main part of this story is how the company that was sued is very clever in buying votes and getting their own people elected into the court. To be honest even though there are alot of characters and its a long process I enjoyed this book . The end was a surprise.
    • 4/5
      Like all Grisham books, I enjoyed this one: looking forward to getting back to it, and not wanting to stop while reading. This book reminded me of the last few Tom Clancy novels, but with a polar message: Tom Clancy's book represented liberals as unethical scum of the earth, while Grisham's novel thought conservatives were the cause all of our problems. The ending depressed me.
    • 4/5
      Nasty corporate polluters, struggling lawyers, corrupt judges in the Deep South. Yup, typical Grisham. I liked this one less than usual.
    • 3/5
      John Grisham sometimes falls into the trap of having bad characters be too bad, and good characters be too good. The characters in The Appeal were rather flat. Well, hell, they were flat. No character development whatsoever.

      However, Mr. Grisham also knows his shit when it comes to legal stuff. I dislike big business. I dislike politics. I hate big business putting its interests into politics. The money that controls the system is a disgrace to democracy.

      This book touches on so much that I hate about the system. If only poetic justice happened more often in real life!
    • 2/5
      I read this in April of 2008 after Justice Nehring (of the Utah Supreme Court) told me he was listening to it on CD during his commute each day. Three quarters of my way through it, he told me it was not worth finishing. He was right.

      Talk about much ado about nothing. The novel starts strong, provides an interesting conflict, and than (spoiler alert) completely drops the ball. Not that the bad guy has to lose and the good guy has to win every time, but the characters are skewed and distorted so much to the extreme that everything is black and white, not the gray that is the real world, and STILL the bad guy comes out on top.

      One is left to believe that there is no real justice, that our political system leaves zero opportunity for the common man to be heard or represented, and that all persons wealthy are superficial and power hungry.

      Sorry, but that's not the real world. Nor does it make good fiction. I was left feeling both condescended and disappointed. Does Grisham really think we are so stupid?

      On the other hand, a conspiracy theory always makes for fun fiction...for a few pages. Eventually, things have to resolve, and i'd like to feel good about the resolution.
    • 2/5
      Once upon a time there was this author of tremendous page-turning legal thrillers that could have you up half the night, not necessarily just because of the taut action but also, often, because of the moral/ethical themes being worked through by the protagonists. Then, somewhere along the line, this author seemed to lose the knack of thriller-writing; his novels could often still be interesting for their exploration, sometimes satirical, of current ethical issues affecting -- or, perhaps more important, failing to affect -- the practice of US law. Every now and then he'd still produce a thriller. More often, you'd find yourself reading what had more the affect of a semi-fictionalized true-crime book of the sort one used occasionally to pick up guiltily in paperback, usually based on a murderer or murder case you'd never actually heard of and also, typically, long on event but short on analysis.

      The Appeal is, alas, one of those. It's entertaining enough in a take-it-or-leave-it sort of a way. An offshoot of ghastly company Krane Chemical, largely owned by the even ghastlier trillionaire Carl Trudeau, has been dumping toxic wastes near a small Mississippi town, poisoning the local water supply and causing a few score local deaths. Against the odds, local mom-and-pop legal firm scores a big one in court, getting a settlement that, while insultingly tiny in terms of the suffering perpetrated, still looks pretty goddam hefty on paper. So rather than actually fucking pay for what's basically an act of mass murder, Trudeau decides to fight the verdict in court as far as he can; further, in order to aid his chances, he employs a bunch of white-collar criminals to oust one of the sitting judges on the Mississippi Supreme Court and replace her with someone "sympathetic to the cause of business".

      I read this around the time of the anniversary of the Exxon Mobil disaster, the start of a long chain of legally sanctioned crimes committed by the corporation in question -- whose relevant executives should, frankly, be behind bars for their disgusting acts -- so, believe me, the theme of The Appeal had a decidedly immediate resonance for me. But it somehow didn't seem to be a novel. Five stars for worthiness, then; but only about one star as a piece of storytelling.
    • 3/5
      I was going to give this book 4 stars, til I got to the end...the ending absolutely sucks...I won't spoil it for you, if you really do want to read it...but let me just say the ending was a one-star ending.
    • 2/5
      Since when do the good guys not win in a John Grisham book?! The ending was just so depressing...I mean, only the villain won! He doubled his billions and the sick people got NOTHING except more sickness and some more death. Totally not cool, John Grisham.
    • 2/5
      I don't know why I keep hoping for more from John Grisham, but I keep waiting for him to get back to the thrillers he was once famous for. I recall enjoying The Pelican Brief and The Firm (though I read these so long ago that I haven't rated them here) and I have to wonder at this point if my enjoyment of them was because I had not yet been introduced to great writing. The major problems of this novel center on two issues: character development and a lack of any subtlety whatsoever. First, to character development. A writer should strive to have characters we care about with rich backstories explaining their motivations and who are not all perfect or all terrible. While having characters who are "all perfect" or "all terrible" can lead to interesting forays into symbolism and allegory, that is not what anyone should ever expect from a Grisham novel. But what Grisham delivers here instead IS the all perfect and all terrible characters with no real purpose whatsoever to their lack of flaws or pure evil besides getting his message out, namely "corporations are bad, plaintiff's trial lawyers are heroes". I have no doubt that it would be possible to craft a trial lawyer who is pursuing justice but is nonetheless capable of making mistakes and being ruthless in that pursuit (just ask Scott Turow, who is absolutely tremendous when compared to Mr. Grisham on this count). But apparently Mr. Grisham prefers his characters to be the zealous pursuers of the right who are nevertheless undone by malevolent forces beyond their control that they can hardly anticipate. They are pure and without any fault. In short, they are not real. The same can be said for Mr. Grisham's villain. I don't doubt that some version of Carl Trudeau exists in our world, but I do doubt that he is some sort of maniacal Cruella de Vil sort (who, by the way, is guilty of committing all sorts of SEC violations that would no doubt be uncovered in the real world). Ron Fisk is the only one who comes even close to appearing to be a real character, but even he is basically made into a simpleton when it's not truly necessary.

      This ties into my second criticism of the lack of any subtlety whatsoever to the novel. There is no doubt more or less from page one where Grisham is headed with this one, because he telegraphs how much he hates big business and how plaintiff's lawyers are heroes for standing up to the corporations. I don't necessarily object to the message (corporations have been known for doing exactly what is portrayed in this book, after all), but I think it's ludicrous the way it is presented. There is no pause to consider that corporations provide jobs and all sorts of other benefits. No, instead they are headed by men like Carl Trudeau who do nothing except plot ways to destroy others in pursuit of the almighty buck. To say this book was "too on the nose" in its criticism would be wildly understating the problem.

      I truly think Grisham has a point when it comes to judicial elections. I do not support them in any way. But the way that this novel is presented just makes it too much like an old fashioned morality play that undercuts the message. I gave this two stars because I felt the plot was at least OK, but that's really all that can be said for it. Grisham is capable of more, but maybe I have to stop expecting that I'll get more from him.
    • 2/5
      This was good until the last third or so. Then it fizzled and had a crap ending.
    • 4/5
      As always, it was a gripping Grisham plot and a fast-paced read. Even though it's a fiction there is a lot of truth in it. All over the world politicians are affected by lobbyists and to be honest not always in a good manner. Money makes the world go round is unfortunately true and therefore only a handful is able to benefit from the lobbying. Whenever I hear of such extortionate settlements I can only disbelieving shake my head. In Europe we are not used to such amounts.
    • 4/5
      The Appeal was the first Grisham's book I've ever read and I was not disappointed. it is one of those books you actually believe while reading. Sure, it's not perfect. The storyline has been underdeveloped to my mind, what's more the author introduced us dozens of characters, not really focusing on some of them long enough to point out the main ones. Sometimes this book just doesn't feel like fiction... But despite everything mentioned I like it. I like it because of the writing style, because of the hot topic and most of all because of its unpredictable (in my opinion) ending. All in all, I enjoyed the Appeal and it encouraged me to check up the other Grisham's books.
    • 5/5
      How on earth can you go wrong with Grisham. This book is about big corporations manipulating and buying judges. As always, not only a good read but educational. Thanks John !!!
    • 4/5
      This is a very believable story about the CEO of a firm that ignores the law and pollutes the environment. The pollution creates a cluster of cancers. A couple of lawyers decide to go to trial: they are going to win. Unless the CEO finds a parade, and he does: he is going to buy himself a state supreme court judge. It is a fascinating read, as usual with Grisham. I specially like the link between the trial and the evolution of the value of the stock on the market. As Grisham says himself in a note at the end of the book: "there is a lot of truth in this story." It is the not so pleasant side of the book.An excellent read.
    • 1/5
      Disappointing. Poorly written and, after the first half, poorly plotted too. I read Grisham for the plot, so it was this latter point which was the main problem. While I agreed with his central thesis - that the judiciary should not be available to be bought by big business, the realistic ending he opted for, where big business wins the day, was not what I was looking for in such escapist fiction. He has written far better books than this. One to be avoided.
    • 4/5
      This is a thorougly depressing book, well-told. Once again Grisham tells a tale of political and corporate corruption, this time of large polluting corporations buying judgeships in order to get the verdict they want. He makes each of the characters real, even the bad guys. Of course it is the victims that one most feels for.Grisham is way too believable, and thus the depression. I have no doubt that events similar to those in the book are going on even now. I'm glad that Grisham's out there, writing best sellers, and telling the public how the world works.
    • 1/5
      The Appeal is a story that revolves around a wrongful death lawsuit filed against a large chemical corporation by a small town law firm, and a Mississippi Supreme Court election (which eventually becomes the main focus). The plot (if you could call it that) was not as intriguing as most Grisham novels. This was a very politically charged story and rather than tell a good story it seemed as though the author was more concerned with stating an opinion. I realize that it is common in novels for an author to base his/her plot on a specific issue, but in this case, it was done at the expense of a good read. I say that not because I’m in total disagreement with those opinions; I agreed with some and disagreed with others. My problem with it was the very overt manner in which the ideas were expressed which caused the storyline to suffer and take a backseat. Although I did finish the book, it was not because I couldn’t put it down; it was just that I don’t like to start a book and then not complete it. There were few plot twists and the ending was very predictable and anticlimactic. Overall, this book was quite disappointing. Being a huge Grisham fan, this book ranks at the bottom of my list.
    • 3/5
      John Grisham attempts to recapture the tension and flavor of his early work, especially his hugely popular "The Firm" in this look at personal injury law in Mississippi. The book focuses on a case of wrongful death against a chemical company, and the lengths to which the company goes to win a reversal of the case on appeal.The book has two main focuses. The first is on the appeal of the case itself, which threatens to bankrupt the small legal practice of husband and wife lawyers. The anticipation of other victims, who have their own cases pending, and the attempts of other lawyers to enroll multiple clients for a class action suit.The second, and eventually overpowering focus, is on the attempt of the company to elect a pro-business, anti-liability lawsuit judge to the Mississippi supreme court. Grisham is obviously concerned about the elections for supreme court justices in his home state, and he spares no effort to detail the great lengths that the chemical company, and those it employs, go to, sparing no expense to put their judge on the court.In some ways, this is Grisham's best novel in recent years, though it certainly does not compare to his stellar non-fiction debut, "The Innocent Man." Unlike some recent books, this one has more characters and much more plot. In fact, Grisham seems to be introducing new characters for almost the entire book, a welcome change from books like "The Broker" and "The Testament," which seemed a little paint by numbers.On the other hand, while the conspiracies of "The Appeal" are interesting and lead to a page-turning thriller, the end of the novel is very disappointing, a resolution that seems forced on the story. While the ending does not entirely ruin the novel, it certainly leaves an unpleasant aftertaste, which lessens the story's effect.