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#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A high-stakes thrill ride through the darkest corners of the Sunshine State, from the author hailed as “the best thriller writer alive” by Ken Follett
We expect our judges to be honest and wise. Their integrity is the bedrock of the entire judicial system. We trust them to ensure fair trials, to protect the rights of all litigants, to punish those who do wrong, and to oversee the flow of justice. But what happens when a judge bends the law or takes a bribe?
Lacy Stoltz is an investigator for the Florida Board on Judicial Conduct. It is her job to respond to complaints dealing with judicial misconduct. After nine years with the Board, she knows that most problems are caused by incompetence, not corruption.
But a corruption case eventually crosses her desk. A previously disbarred lawyer is back in business, and he claims to know of a Florida judge who has stolen more money than all other crooked judges combined. And not just crooked judges in Florida. All judges, from all states, and throughout United States history. And now he wants to put a stop to it. His only client is a person who knows the truth and wants to blow the whistle and collect millions under Florida law. When the case is assigned to Lacy, she immediately suspects that this one could be dangerous. Dangerous is one thing. Deadly is something else.
Look for John Grisham’s new novel, The Judge’s List!
“[A] main character [who’s] a seriously appealing woman . . . a whistle-blower who secretly calls attention to corruption . . . a strong and frightening sense of place . . . [John Grisham’s] on his game.”—Janet Maslin, The New York Times
“[John Grisham is] our guide to the byways and backwaters of our legal system, superb in particular at ferreting out its vulnerabilities and dramatizing their abuse in gripping style.”—USA Today
“Riveting . . . an elaborate conspiracy.”—The New York Times Book Review
About John Grisham
John Grisham (born February 8, 1955 in Jonesboro, Arkansas) is an American novelist, lawyer and former member of the 7th district of the Mississippi House of Representatives, known for his popular legal thrillers. According to the American Academy of Achievement, Grisham has written 28 consecutive number-one fiction bestsellers, and his books have sold 300 million copies worldwide. Along with Tom Clancy and J. K. Rowling, Grisham is one of only three authors to have sold two million copies on a first printing.
Grisham graduated from Mississippi State University and earned a Juris Doctor from the University of Mississippi School of Law in 1981. He practised criminal law for about a decade and served in the Mississippi House of Representatives from 1983 to 1990.
Grisham’s first novel, A Time to Kill, was published in June 1989, four years after he began writing it. Grisham’s first bestseller, The Firm, sold more than seven million copies. The book was adapted into a 1993 feature film of the same name, starring Tom Cruise, and a 2012 TV series which continues the story ten years after the events of the film and novel. Seven of his other novels have also been adapted into films: The Chamber, The Client, A Painted House, The Pelican Brief, The Rainmaker, The Runaway Jury, and Skipping Christmas.
Grisham is a two-time winner of the Harper Lee Prize for Legal Fiction and was honored with the Library of Congress Creative Achievement Award for Fiction.
When he’s not writing, Grisham serves on the board of directors of the Innocence Project and of Centurion Ministries, two national organizations dedicated to exonerating those who have been wrongfully convicted. Much of his fiction explores deep-seated problems in our criminal justice system.
John Girsham lives on a farm in central Virginia.
About The Whistler (2 book series)
1. The Whistler (Book 1)
The Whistler is a novel written by American author John Grisham. It was released in hardcover, large print paperback, e-book, compact disc audiobook and downloadable audiobook on October 25, 2016. It is a legal thriller about Florida Board on Judicial Conduct investigator Lacy Stoltz.
The plot centers on the legal and moral problems involved in Native American gaming. The (fictional) Tappacola Nation, a small Native American tribe located in the northern part of Florida, starts a casino in their reservation, giving the tribe members an unprecedented economic affluence and a measure of compensation for their sufferings during the centuries of European settlement, but also opening wide the potential for corruption and involvement with organized crime, up to and including outright murder.
Plot
A mysterious source contacts the (fictional) Florida Board on Judicial Conduct, or BJC, promising information that will reveal the identity and crimes of the most corrupt judge in U.S. history. Investigator Lacy Stoltz is assigned to the case, and takes her sometime-partner Hugo Hatch with her to St. Augustine to meet the source in person. The source is revealed to be a disgraced lawyer from Pensacola named Ramsey Mix.
Mix reveals that the corrupt judge is Claudia McDover of Florida’s 24th Circuit. Over the course of almost two decades, McDover has aided the local Coast Mafia in their scheme to build a casino in partnership with the Tappacola Indian Nation. Aside from skimming money from the casino, the Coast Mafia has also been responsible for many nearby real estate developments, with any legal problems smoothed over by McDover in exchange for cash payments and condominiums. In addition, the Coast Mafia has staged the murder of Son Razko, a prominent anti-casino member of the Tappacola Nation, and McDover has falsely convicted his right-hand man, Junior Mace, of the crime. Mix has been given this information by an intermediary representing an unknown “mole” close to McDover.
When Stoltz and Hatch begin an investigation, the leader of the Coast Mafia, Vonn Dubose, decides to retaliate. Stoltz and Hatch are lured to a remote part of the Tappacola reservation by a tribal member claiming to be a source. Driving away from the uneventful meeting, the duo are deliberately struck head-on by a truck. Hatch is killed and Stoltz is badly injured. This escalation convinces the director of the BJC, Michael Geismar, to ask for help from the FBI. However, the up-and-coming mob lieutenant tasked with killing Hatch and Stoltz left behind evidence at the crime scene and was caught on video at a nearby convenience store. Aided by this evidence and a former Tappacola Nation constable, BJC and FBI investigators find Hatch’s killers and offer them reduced sentences in exchange for information against those higher up in the Coast Mafia.
As their operation begins to unravel, Dubose and McDover realize there is a leak. Suspicion lands on McDover’s court recorder, JoHelen Hooper, who is in fact Mix’s source. Realizing her danger, Hooper hides in a cheap hotel on Panama City Beach, but she is tracked there by a Coast Mafia hitman. With Stoltz’s help, she manages to evade the hitman. Both women retreat to a lakeside cabin in North Carolina for safety while the FBI captures Dubose and McDover.
Read More: [Review-Quotes] The Whistler: A Novel by John Grisham
2. The Judge’s List (Book 2)
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.
Suspicions are easy enough, but proof seems impossible. The man 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.
He has a list, with the names of his victims and targets, all unsuspecting people unlucky enough to have crossed his path and wronged him in some way. How can Lacy pursue him, without becoming the next name on his list?
The Judge’s List is by any measure John Grisham’s most surprising, chilling novel yet.
Plot
Three years after the events of The Whistler, Lacy Stolz is tired of her work as an investigator for the Florida Board on Judicial Conduct. But when Jeri Crosby nervously approaches her, Lacy discovers that a sitting judge is a murderer. She’s reluctant to get involved, but Jeri is obsessed with bringing the man to justice.
Jeri’s father was one of the victims 20 years earlier, although his case has never been solved. She has studied the judge for two decades, and has discovered other victims in the process.
While the serial killer’s guilt is never really in doubt, finding evidence to convict him is a much bigger challenge, because he knows the law, and is always one step ahead of law enforcement. He has a list that includes the names of all his targets who have wronged him in some way, and Lacy must help Jeri establish his guilt without either of them becoming his next victim.
Read More: [Review-Quotes] The Judge’s List (The Whistler Book 2) by John Grisham
Highlights: The Whistler Series by John Grisham
Book 1 – The Whistler
“The judge is the Honorable Claudia McDover, on the bench now for seventeen years.”
“Total isolation leads to sensory deprivation and all sorts of mental problems.”
“Oh well. Part of being single was dealing with the misconceptions of others.”
“And it’s often the one you trust the most who’ll cut your throat for the right price.”
“Well, in my world, our world, there are too many guns and too many bad things happen because of them.” Pippin,”
“The sixth and last eulogy was from Roderick, Hugo and Verna’s oldest child. He wrote a three-page tribute to his father, and it was read by the reverend. Even Michael Geismar, a cold-blooded Presbyterian, finally succumbed to his emotions. The”
“Nor did she like society’s way of presuming she was unhappy because she had not found the right guy.”
“The truth was that, at the age of thirty-six, Lacy was content to live alone, to sleep in the center of the bed, to clean up only after herself, to make and spend her own money, to come and go as she pleased, to pursue her career without worrying about his, to plan her evenings with input from no one else, to cook or not to cook, and to have sole possession of the remote control.”
“At times scathing, at times caustic and sarcastic, and never for a moment the least bit sympathetic, the judge’s sentencing tirade raged for thirty minutes and startled many in the courtroom. Claudia, frail and much thinner after seventeen months of jailhouse food, stood as straight as possible and absorbed the blows. Only once did she seem to waver, as if her knees were losing strength. Never did she shed a tear, nor did she take her eyes off the judge.”
Book 2 – The Judge’s List (The Whistler Book 2)
“A psychopath has a severe mental disorder and antisocial behavior. A sociopath is a psychopath on steroids. Not exactly medical definitions but close enough.”
“The fear of getting caught was not driven by the fear of paying the price. Rather, it was the fear of having to stop.”
“She could not imagine finding the patience to raise kids in the age of cell phones, drugs, casual sex, social media, and everything else on the Internet.”
“fierce obsession with anything, and especially something as traumatic as a murder, was not healthy. Denise and Alfred had discussed it over the years, but not recently. They worried about Jeri, though they could do nothing to change her.”
“Pointing the finger at Ross Bannick was a terrifying act, not because she was afraid of being wrong, but because she feared the man himself.”
“She was the only girl he had ever loved. It ended abruptly when she ditched him for a football player. He carried the wounds for six years until he caught her and killed her. Only then had his pain suddenly vanished, his broken heart was healed. The score was even.”
“Why get cute and drop them off in a postal box to be sent to my daughter’s apartment? He had to know that we’d track them and find them within hours. This was a Friday. There was no way the two smartphones would sit undiscovered until Monday.”
“Wow. Quite unusual. Narcissistic, split personality, able to live in one world as a respected, productive member of society while spending his off-hours plotting the next kill. It’ll be hard to nail this guy. Unless.” Allie said, “Unless he makes a mistake, right?”
Editorial Reviews The Whistler (2 book series) by John Grisham
- “Riveting . . . finely drawn . . . The Whistler centers on an elaborate conspiracy involving an Indian reservation, an organized crime syndicate and a crooked judge skimming a small fortune from the tribal casino’s monthly haul.”—The New York Times Book Review
- “A main character who’s a seriously appealing woman . . . a whistle-blower who secretly calls attention to corruption . . . a strong and frightening sense of place . . . Grisham’s on his game.”—Janet Maslin, The New York Times
- “A fascinating look at judicial corruption . . . an entirely convincing story and one of Grisham’s best. I can’t think of another major American novelist since Sinclair Lewis who has so effectively targeted social and political ills in our society. In Grisham’s case, it is time at least to recognize that at his best he is not simply the author of entertaining legal thrillers but an important novelistic critic of our society. In more than 30 novels, he has often used his exceptional storytelling skills to take a hard look at injustice and corruption in the legal world and in our society as a whole.”—Patrick Anderson, The Washington Post
- “Grisham’s latest involves the rich and powerful and an abuse of the justice system. Grisham novels are crowd-pleasers because he knows how to satisfy readers who want to see injustice crushed, and justice truly prevails for those who cannot buy influence.”—Associated Press
- “Grisham has become an institution. For more than 25 years now he’s been our guide to the byways and backwaters of our legal system, superb in particular at ferreting out its vulnerabilities and dramatizing their abuse in gripping style. He excels at describing injustice and corruption. Grisham’s legal knowledge is impressive, and his ability to convey it unparalleled in popular fiction.”—USA Today
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