John Grisham can write suspense — so well that he can keep us eagerly turning the pages even though the plot of The Litigators is completely implausible. It starts with a masterpiece of an on-the-job burnout but shortly the burned-out brilliant lawyer joins a two-bit firm that does not always manage to stay within ethical boundaries as its partners chase ambulances, a most improbable turn of events, even for a very traumatized ex-corporate lawyer, who would obviously do at least as well to hang his own shingle.
But if your mind can make the leap, then his journey into the dirty water of mass-tort lawyering is rather entertaining as he goes up against a formidable partner in his ex-firm — and loses the trial, thankfully, but not the battle. The epilogue is as impossibly rosy as the start, but after a couple hundred entertaining pages.