The Whistler

Gangsters And Indians

John Grisham is one of the few writers whose bestselling legal thrillers also expose social ills in his country—that he has been able to nail so many over 30 books, should be a cause of concern to American society.

There are two interesting things that leap out of the pages of his latest, The Whistler; one that the US has an organisation like the Board on Judicial Conduct, which keeps an eye on corrupt (or misbehaving) judges; two that he has been creating more female protagonists, and in this book, a female antagonist too.

The Whistler (short for whistle blower), starts with a calm scene, in which two BJC officers—Lacy Stoltz and Hugo Hatch—are on the way to meet a complainant. Their conversation is about their choice of music, her blissful singledom and his sleepless nights with four kids and an exhausted wife. After this the action blows up and keeps going till the end.  The two have been approached by a mysterious caller, who wants them to investigate “the most corrupt judge in the history of American jurisprudence.” His motives are not entirely altruistic—he and his invisible informers hope to make a financial killing from the share of the loot confiscated from the judge.

The seat of the corruption is a Native American-operated casino in the Florida Panhandle, and a crooked gangster-cum-real estate shark, who skims off profits from the casino and the development that takes place around it. On his payroll is Judge Claudia McDover, who sees to it that all judgments in her court favour Dubose and his ‘Coast Mafia.’ 

Dubose eliminated anybody who opposed the casino, and made sure the Tappacola tribe that owns the land made enough money to stay silent about his other legal violations. The Native American cops are corrupt, the FBI too busy with chasing terrorists, don’t care much about a money making and laundering in a casino—even though the amount runs into billions.

The BJC is made up of lawyers, not armed cops, and soon the Dubose gang strikes viciously. The attack makes Lacy all the more determined to root out this large scale corruption and get the FBI to nab the gangsters as well as the judge. Lacy’s source is the somewhat sleazy, ex-lawyer Greg Myers, but his “mole” is not revealed till the end.

Even though the book is not a whodunit, but more about how the judge and her cohorts are brought down-- which is the inevitable conclusion—The Whistler is a gripping thriller. Maybe not in the league of his own Gray Mountain (2014), but close enough.  Even though the book lays bare judicial corruption, Grisham does seem to have enough faith in the system to believe that the guilty, no matter how wealthy or powerful, will eventually be punished, and swiftly at that. Wish we could say the same about our country.

The Whistler

By John Grisham

Publisher: Hachette

Pages: 374

Two by Two

Heartbreak and Healing

Nicholas Sparks is undoubtedly one of the world’s most popular writers of romantic fiction, disproving the general notion that only women write love stories.

His 1996 novel, The Notebook started his amazing rise to bestseller fame. Twenty years later, he has come up with his twentieth book, rather unimaginatively titled Two by Two. The narrator is Russell Green, who believe that his love story has a happy end—his wife Vivian is beautiful, they have a lovely daughter, named London; his career  in advertising is doing well.

After such a build up the crash is inevitable. Vivian had given up her job to be a full time homemaker, putting a financial burden on Russell, who bore it cheerfully. Then, she suddenly ups and leaves to take up a lucrative job in another city. Russell is left holding the baby, so to say, as he is turned into a single father to a six-year-old. 

For a man focused on his work (to make this worse he also loses his job), he has to learn all the nitty-gritty of raising his daughter and doing the work of cook, nurse, driver that the urban parent—invariably the mother—has to manage. Most of the story is about Russell becoming the perfect father to London (who is unbearably cute!). But life does throw him a second chance at happiness. Russell admits he is the kind of sweet, romantic caring man, whom women like to make friends with, whose shoulder they cry on, as they have their hearts broken by the bad guys. A man like him does not deserve to be cruelly jilted.

Sparks’s fans know his style is direct and somewhat sappy, what they look for is heart-warming moments of human connection and on that he delivers each time. This book is as much about healing heartbreak as it Is about love, because in these times love stories do not necessarily end with a walk into the sunset.

Two by Two

By Nicholas Sparks

Publisher: Grand Central/Hachette

Pages: 606

The Last Days Of Night

Electric Charge

A novel about the fight over the control of electricity sounds dreary, but Graham Moore’s The Last Days Of Night is historical fiction that reads like a thriller.

The book set in 1988, when two great inventors, Thomas Edison and George Westinghouse, were fighting to control electricity and waiting to reap the monetary wealth and immense power that would accrue to the man who would win the patent battle the electric bukb.

At the centre of this legal battle is a young lawyer, Paul Cravath, who is hired by Westinghouse to represent him against Edison, mainly because a man so young, raw and eager to make his reputation would not have been corrupted by Edison’s power and popularity. The man – and the electricity generating company that won, would change America, and eventually the world forever.

The legal case, involved the light bulb patented by Edison; Westinghouse invented and manufactured what he claimed was a better bulb. The US patent office had decided that Westinghouse’s bulb violated Edison’s patent, and the latter was was demanding $1 billion in damages. Cravath had to prove that Edison’s suit had no merit, because his bulb was different.

Cravath makes up in persistence what he lacks in experience, and brings into the complicated scenario an eccentric Serbian-born inventor Nikola Tesla.  Edison was offering direct current (DC), which could be transmitted only over short distances; Tesla  worked out the higher-voltage alternating current (AC), which would revolutionize the use of electricity. When he crossed swords with Edison and was persuaded by Cravath to work for Westinghouse, his laboratory mysteriously caught fire.

Edison was not just America’s greatest inventor, he was also ruthless, according to Moore’s very readable book. With a section of the media and politicians in his pocket, he tried to emotionally manipulate the country into rejecting AC current as dangerous enough to kill their children.

The story has other fascinating real-life characters, like the beautiful opera singer Agnes Huntington and her formidable mother.  Paul and Agnes had an unlikely romance and ended up getting married. Names like J.P. Morgan and Alexander Graham Bell make an appearance in the novel. It is rather interesting to read the author’s note at the end, to find out how much is fiction and how much fact.

Running through the book is a thread about the spirit of enterprise that rules America, and the skulduggery that goes into business.  Not even a man of Edison’s eminence was not immune to it.

The Last Days of Night

By Graham Moore

Published by Scribner

Pages: 400

Before The Fall

The Man Who Cheated Death

Noah Hawley’s terrific suspense thriller, Before The Fall  begins with a routine boarding on a plane from the posh haunt of the rich, Martha’s Vineyard—the only thing is that it is a private aircraft, and the owner David Bateman is a self-made media baron. On the plane his wife Maggie, kids Rachel and JJ, his friend Ben Kipling (in deep financial trouble) and his wife Sarah, a bodyguard, and the crew.  The surprise passenger is an artist Scott Burroughs—maybe a friend of Maggie maybe something more. 

A few minutes into the flight, the plane crashes, Scott finds himself in the freezing water, along with four-year-old JJ.  Once a champion swimmer, who had turned alcoholic and then cleaned up his act, Scott swims several miles to safety with a busted arm and JJ on his back. It’s a miraculous story of survival and heroism, though Scott does not want media attention. His very reticence ends up making him a suspect. To boost the channel’s ratings, Bill Milligan, a popular anchor on Bateman’s channel, whip up a frenzy of conspiracy theories.

Meanwhile, Maggie’s sister Eleanor and her deadbeat husband Doug find themselves thrust into the role of JJ’s wards, with his large inheritance causing a lot of problems. Eleanor is embarrassed by Doug’s open greed at the prospect of such wealth, and refuses to use any of it for herself.  An unambitous woman very different from Maggie, she tries to bring some stability into the life of her nephew, too young to understand death, yet old enough to suffer the consequences of his fate.

Once the nerve-wracking event is over in the first few pages,  Hawley goes back and forth, in time, examining each character, their past, their mindset, their motivations. The secondary characters-- pilot, co-pilot, stewardess and Bateman’s bodyguard, nine-year-old Rachel also get their own backstories and each one is a wonderful red herring.  For instance, the reader would wonder what connection Rachel’s kidnapping in the past has to the plane crash that kills her.

Somewhere in there is a who, why and how, and the layers of suspense are built up brilliantly. Scott gets into trouble, in spite of his superhuman feat, because he had been painting a series of disasters; that and the fact that an impoverished artist had no business being in such luxurious surroundings  to begin with.

The reader has been with him on that arduous swim, and is on his side. But Bill Milligan does everything he can to paint him as a villain who is pulling a con on the public. How could a properly checked aircraft with very little chance of malfunctioning crash just like that? There could be people who wanted Bateman or Kipling dead, so was it an accident or mass murder?  In the midst of all the hysteria, poor JJ, who has gone through a trauma no kid should suffer, finds refuge in silence and in protesting attempts to cut his hair. Before The Fall is a very readable book.

Before the Fall

By Noah Hawley

Publisher: Grand Central/Hachette

Pages: 391 pages