by Selena Robinson

Created on: January 03, 2010

Rudy Baylor is in his final semester of law school at the University of Memphis when he meets Buddy and Dot Black. The Blacks are in the middle of a contentious dispute with their insurance company, Great Benefit Life. Great Benefit is refusing to pay medical bills for the Blacks’ son, Donny Ray, who is now dying of leukemia due to the company’s policy of refusing claims. Upon accepting the Blacks’ case, Rudy is thrust into a landmark legal matter that he is totally unprepared to argue.

In The Rainmaker by John Grisham (Doubleday, 1995), Rudy spends his final weeks as a law student in a state of chaos. Among Rudy’s troubles are his eviction, the loss of his only job offer, his ex-girlfriend’s impending engagement, and his last minute preparation for the bar exam. In the middle of all of this, Rudy receives the Blacks’ case and is pitted against Great Benefit’s experienced defense team from Tinley Britt, the most prestigious law firm in Memphis.

To fight the insurance company’s high-powered defense, Rudy has to turn to his co-counsel Deck Shifflet, a paralegal who got his legal education at night school and has failed the bar exam six times. The other members of Rudy’s advisory panel include his law school professor, his best friend and fellow unlicensed attorney Booker Kane, and J. Lyman “Bruiser” Stone, a back alley lawyer with ties to the underworld.

Even though the odds are heavily stacked against his clients, the more Rudy finds out about the insurance company’s egregious behavior, the more determined he becomes to get justice for Donny Ray by holding Great Benefit responsible for his death. As both the case and Rudy’s personal life become more complicated, Rudy finds out that, despite his law school education, he still has a lot to learn about the legal system and about life.

The Rainmaker is a lengthy, but well written narrative. Throughout the book, Grisham does a wonderful job of painting Rudy Baylor as an engaging and extremely sympathetic character. While the case involves corporate misconduct, Rudy doesn’t morph into an agent for social change. He merely wants to do what he can to right a terrible wrong.

On the other hand, Grisham has a strong distaste for snobby, high-priced law firms and it shows in his depiction of Tinley Britt. He describes the firm as an overpaid and unethical hired gun willing to defend just about any company. From the way he describes Great Benefit Life, Grisham is no fan of the insurance industry either and the slanted storytelling gets a little heavy-handed in a few places.

Despite the soapbox issues, the book is engrossing from start to finish. As Rudy’s life and his first case take a series of unexpected turns, the story deals with ethical, legal, and moral issues in a way that will hold readers’ interest up until the very end.

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