by Selena Robinson

Created on: January 06, 2010   Last Updated: January 07, 2010

Ray Atlee is a moderately successful law professor in Virginia. He is enjoying his new found single status and has deliberately severed his ties with his family and his hometown of Clanton, Mississippi. But Ray’s carefully crafted comfort is disturbed when he receives a summons from his father, retired judge Reuben Atlee. The summons instructs him to return home to discuss his father’s will and estate.

In The Summons by John Grisham (Doubleday, 2002), Ray makes the long travel home and is greeted by the sight of his father, lying dead on the couch. As Ray looks around for any possible clues as to Judge Atlee’s death, he stumbles upon $3 million in cash. Dumbfounded by the discovery, Ray begins his search into his father’s past to try to find out where the money came from. But before he can begin his investigation, he starts receiving threatening calls and visits that endanger both his life and his career.

For Ray, the search for the money’s origin is only one of his problems. He has also become responsible for his younger brother, Forrest, a hopeless drug addict and the official black sheep of the family. Wanting to protect both his brother and his own prospects with the money, Ray keeps his discovery a secret from everyone, including Harry Rex Vonner, a local lawyer and friend of the family. But, as Ray’s life becomes more complicated, he may not live long enough to find out the story behind the cash.

The Summons is a fast-moving, well paced story. Grisham has a true talent for honest storytelling. He doesn’t idealize any of his characters, preferring to show them as human and flawed. Ray Atlee is no exception. Readers can easily sympathize with his feelings, but Grisham also exposes Ray’s hidden desire for affluence as seen in his desire to buy a private plane and his plans for the money. The novel is a lesson in the effects of the prospect of sudden wealth and Grisham makes this point often in his stories, weaving a similar moral ethic into his book The King of Torts.

The novel also depicts Ray as a slightly conceited individual, believing that he is smart enough to keep all of his life’s issues separated from one another. Despite Ray’s planning, the money, the death threats, Forrest’s addictions, Judge Atlee’s estate and Ray’s own growing desire for wealth eventually prove to be too much to handle. As such, the work is also a lesson in the dangers of overconfidence.

Regular readers of Grisham’s work will recognize Harry Rex Vonner from the novel, A Time to Kill. The Summons offers a deeper look into his character, showing Harry Rex as a clever, practical lawyer and, more importantly, a good friend to Ray. Patton French, a mass tort lawyer from the Gulf Coast and a character in The King of Torts, also makes an appearance in the book. Overall, The Summons is a good read, full of honest character depictions and constantly building suspense.

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