A sermon on the Summons. Review on Summons, The - John Grisham

PLOT REVEALED

This is another John Grisham bestseller to the core. It has all the traits. A slow beginning, a nice build up where all characters are established, and a few flashbacks to explain why every character behaves the way they do, an event which is shattering and then the fallout. Then the last 50 or odd pages where everything goes berserk before an unsettling climax. Grisham all the way.

The Summons is basically about the Atlee Clan. The senior Judge Atlee who has been on the bench for many years but now has retired, has two sons a brilliant law professor Raymond Atlee and no-good, dumb-witted drug and alcohol addict Forrest Atlee. The story basically revolves around Raymond Atlee.

Judge Atlee is an honest judge a descendant of the illustrious General Atlee who fought in the Civil War and whose portrait adorns his house. He is an old world man. He donates generally to charities. In fact he donates till it hurts. Name a cause and he would donate. So the people of his town like him and he likes that. He has served a majority of his life on the bench and has retired for quite some years now. He wanted his son to practice law but Raymond disappointed him when he began to teach it instead. Of Forrest he did not expect anything except that somehow he would stay out of trouble. The relations between the Judge and his sons are thoroughly explained with the help of short stories and incidents in flashback mode. The Judge is very formal with his sons and showing them his emotions is out of the question.

Raymond Atlee is a law professor in Boston who loves his job but hates his life. He heart broke recently when his beautiful wife left him without as much as a note to be with a wealthy man. The divorce was quick and she never told him why. He tries to maintain a cheerful approach towards life but finds it tough. To compound his problems a beautiful student who will graduate in a few weeks is hitting on him. And he is very tempted, very tempted indeed broken as his heart is.

Forrest Atlee is hopeless. He is an addict of everything. He never holds a job too long. He never remains sober for long. In fact he counts how many number of days he's been sober and brandishes the number to everybody like his SAT score. He has been to detox units a number of times but it has never helped him. His brother Ray has driven him to detox clinics many times, and his stay there has been always been financed by his father.

In this backdrop, Judge Atlee who's ailing with cancer, issues THE SUMMONS. He calls both of his sons asking them to come so that he could settle his estate. Ray who arrives first finds his father dead. He is not much surprised but finds an empty bottle of morphine. He rationalizes that his father must not have been able to bear the pain. But he is shell-shocked when he finds three million dollars and change in cash. Now he moves it to a room where no one will see it. At this point Forrest arrives. They call their lawyer and friend and notify the authorities. They give their father a great burial a burial deserved by a man of his stature.

Now Ray who is befuddled does not know what to do. At first he suspects whether his father was corrupt. But that could be impossible because in Memphis where he was a judge there was no way that 3 million could be made in bribes. He investigates this angle and draws a blank. He then checks whether the bills are genuine by checking them out in Casinos. Well the currency is real. He then checks whether his father could have made this money gambling but he investigates brilliantly and eliminates this possibility. He considers sharing some of his good fortune with his brother but knows that he would just kill himself with alcohol and drugs.

Meanwhile he is lessons as a pilot chartering the latest plane making cash payments with the money and is very happy with his fortune. He starts getting phone calls and threatening letters ordering him not to spend the money. His home in Boston is broken into twice. His father's house in Memphis is attacked and ransacked. Ray has hidden the money. But his tormentors find out where the money is. Terrified, Ray retrieves the money and flees and is now on the run. While he is on the run, through his ongoing investigations he finds out what the money was doing in his house. The answer is very amusing but believable believe me(Vinay).

He goes to his Memphis home afraid to return to Boston. There he is made to give up the money by his relentless pursuers. He runs from his father's home and as he is running his father's house is set on fire. He is caught speeding and is subsequently accused for arson as the house is insured for much more than its sale value.

And the finale will appear as a twist to first time Grisham readers but because I have read many Grisham's I could guess it and so will you if you are a regular reader. Whether you believe me or not really does not matter though. What matters is the ending though contrived seems believable and brilliant.

Well since I have revealed so much, it turns out that Forrest had arrived a week before his father's death. He did not intend to kill his father but on seeing him suffer in pain he administered him a fatal dose of morphine inadvertently killing him. He then discovered the cash. He is not bright enough to know what is to be done. He figures out that Ray would know what to do and on finding the cash would share it with him. So he leaves it there and pretends he never arrived. Ray does not show any signs of sharing the fortune and so he is compelled to resort to terror tactics to get the money. After getting the money he does not blow it, but instead admits himself into a 5 star rehab center. The book ends with Ray begging Forrest to share the money giving him honest reasons and Forrest saying that he will consider it one year from now when he will be out of rehab.

This book is a touching human drama at times, at the end it is a thriller. I really liked it. The characters are well etched. The book has a legal background and all but is a pure hard core thriller. This is a must read. And of course Grisham goes into the details of everything here the judges, their elections, the pilots, their planes, the addicts, their pains, the laws everything. So if you wanted a crash course.