Your characters are likable with a moral compass. The first three-fourths of the book was just downright boring and slightly depressing. The six ballfields he built on his property have played host to over 350 kids on 26 Little League teams. A group of lawyer students, about to graduate from law school find themselves buried in debt with no way out. In the entertaining The Rooster Bar (Doubleday, 352 pp., ★★★ out of four), the aptly named Foggy Bottom Law School in D.C. makes its dough by churning out grads of dubious pedigree with even worse job prospects, all saddled with mountains of debt, much of which is likely to end up in taxpayers’ laps. I liked the author’s name in gold against the black. Two of the three main characters were borderline repulsive and the third female character came across as stupid and insulting to me as a female. m=s.getElementsByTagName(o)[0];a.async=1;a.src=g;m.parentNode.insertBefore(a,m) Grisham, who’s at his best when he brings his sardonic sense of humor to the sometimes questionable ethics of law and banking, also takes aim at the politics of immigration. Curl up with these great new books this fall. To calculate the overall star rating and percentage breakdown by star, we don’t use a simple average. Top subscription boxes – right to your door, © 1996-2020, Amazon.com, Inc. or its affiliates. John Grisham cherry-picks a couple of humdinger, real-life scandals for his latest legal thriller, and one is the little-known racket of third-tier, for-profit law schools. Character names are cringe-worthy: Hadley Caviness, Wilson Featherstone, Chap Gronski. Made his name really stand out. The action kicks off when their bipolar classmate Gordy Tanner (who’s having a fling with Zola) goes all Carrie Mathison on them, complete with a Homeland-style wall chart of conspiracies linking a shady Wall Street investor to their lousy law school. 100 women, 100 years What's safe? Obviously none of their classes covered the concept of due diligence. They accepted the money quickly but tried to find ways to not pay it back. Overall an okay-ish read. I was very disappointed in this last publication. Apparently it takes them three years to figure out that few people graduate/pass the bar/find jobs. Were you aware that such scams are taking place within our school system? One last thing: supposedly all this was triggered by the death of their friend but it angered me to see this become more of an excuse than a real motivation. I would love to hear your thoughts on it. Disabling it will result in some disabled or missing features. The Rooster Bar was a bit cliched in parts and not as tense as some of the other novels by Grisham. A 3-star book review. THE ROOSTER BAR. That’s right, they get even with the school and it’s owner by scamming people in some of the worst moments of their life. CHARACTERIZATION – 4 STARS – There were a couple of characters I would have liked to have gotten to know better, especially  Gordy Tanner and his illness. How, exactly, would their removal benefit this great nation of immigrants? })(window,document,'script','https://www.google-analytics.com/analytics.js','ga');

Have you heard of any others? Made his name really stand out. Your California Privacy Rights/Privacy Policy. I am a huge John Grisham fan. They devise a plan to expose the shady lenders. ), 'Camino Island': Grisham's tasty thriller about a literary heist. Let’s recap: three law students choose to go to a private law school unaffiliated with any college or university in DC. I've read all of his books, but his latest ones have severely declined in both imagination and writing quality. (Maybe they’ve read a few John Grisham novels? A real cynical, bleeding-heart, boring tale of two losers who end up getting away with their scarcely-believable criminal activity while thumbing their noses at the nasty, evil, law enforcement people who annoyingly insist that we follow the rules. I found it very predictable and boring. “The Rooster Bar” is written with the same verve Grisham brought to this summer’s “Camino Island”; with the same sense that this reliable best-selling author is … This page works best with JavaScript. They want to get even so they do so by dropping out and practicing law without a license. There's a problem loading this menu right now.