Customer Reviews

The Summons

5 star:		(71)
4 star:		(128)
3 star:		(147)
2 star:		(156)
1 star:		(180)

 

 

One of the problems of being a lawyer is that you can start to think like one all too much of the time. For those who are most fascinated by the law, the favorite intellectual game is to pose ever more complex scenarios to test what is the right solution. John Grisham clearly thought he was writing a law school hypothetical problem when he penned this novel . . . which will leave those who aren't lawyers puzzled, troubled, and disgruntled.

From a legal and personal perspective, this book raises some nice ethical questions:

1. What is the obligation to protect the reputation and memory of a deceased person?

2. How should an addict be protected from hurting himself?

3. How far should potentially illegal activities be pursued by an attorney who is an executor of an estate?

4. How should protecting property be weighed against protecting life?

5. Can you overcome the temptation to run off with something that no one knows you have found?

Attorney and law professor Ray Atlee is faced with all of those issues and more when he returns home to find his father dead and the living room filled with stationery boxes bursting with cash. First, he wants to know if the cash is counterfeit or part of some illegal activity. Second, he is concerned that his brother not go on a long cocaine-sniffing holiday from which he might not survive. Third, he's afraid someone will walk off with the money. Fourth, he begins to think how nice it would be to avoid paying taxes on the money. Fifth, he dreams about having it all to himself.

But life isn't that simple. Someone else seems to know about the money, and they are getting aggressive about retrieving it. What will Ray do?

There's supposed to be a mystery here, but parts of it are pretty transparent. What isn't transparent eventually turns out to be far-fetched.

Except for tickling my memories of property class hypotheticals, I didn't find much to recommend this book. If you do decide to read it, I suggest that you listen instead to the Recorded Books reading by Michael Beck who makes a lot of the silliness sound more interesting.

The Summons differs from the bulk of Grisham's body of work in that it relies heavily on suspense and contains very little action. I enjoyed reading this book the lead character was compelling and the story held my interest throughout.

This is a psychological drama where the bulk of suspense occurs in the imagination of the lead character. I can understand why a Grisham fan would not enjoy this book. It doesn't fit his typical mold.

However if you enjoy a good suspense that gets you thinking you may find enjoyment in this book. I did.

I've loved this author's earlier books, but is he turning out to be like so many who turn out a good novel or two, then, in order to keep the$ coming in, churns out new ones even when they're not worth reading? In earlier novels I have always admired a certain, admittedly far-fetched, logic to the unravelling of the story. Don't look for that in this one. We begin to understand why the protagonist's wife decided to leave him abruptly sometime in the past. His actions are so unreasonable as to stretch credulence. As others have said, it IS a page-turner, and the faster the pages turn, the better. The rather predictable "surprise" ending just dribbles away to a conclusion, with nothing there. In short, check this book out of the library if you've got to have something to read for a summer trip, but don't expect much.

I have been, and still am, a big fan of John Grisham since 1995 when I read "The Pelican Brief". His books are still good after all this time and even better!

The story goes about a professor who receives a note from his father, who is dying of cancer and hasn't gotten along very well, asking him please to come back to the hometown for discussing his last will.

As soon as he arrives, he finds his father dead and discovers more than 3 million dollars in cash hidden inside a cabinet. No time has he to think about this "mostly unusual" discovery when his younger brother, an addict and the family's disgrace, arrives.

The professor decides to hide his finding from almost everyone, except one person who knows about the money too and tries to recover it...

The plot is really well written, entertaining and has an almost unusual and perhaps unexpected ending...

Most Grisham books can be described as having weak characterization but a strong plot or theme ("The Firm" comes to mind). Not this one. Basically, as I read this book, I kept waiting for there to be an actual plot. Forget it. There is no plot to speak of.

Basically (no spoiler here) the protagonist's father is an honest but tyrannical judge. He dies. The protagonist finds a whole lot of cash money in his estate that cannot be explained. Can't be bribes because the judge was honest. So where did the money come from? That's the "plot." You get this in the first few pages. I won't "spoil" the rest, except that there is hardly any more to spoil.

This is one of Grisham's weaker books. It was readable, and his description of the "King of Torts" lawyer was funny, if stereotypical. But make no mistake, there isn't much of a story here. It is almost as though Grisham lost interest in this one even as he was writing it.

I'll give it two stars because it was not so bad that I didn't finish it.

I've liked the other Grisham books I've read, but didn't enjoy this one, and the ending left me flat. I'll be checking the Amazon reviews before reading any other of his works.

Judge Reuben Atlee of Clanton, Mississippi, an irascible Southern aristocrat, now alone and wizened, has typed a brief letter on his old Underwood summoning his long-departed sons to discuss the disposition of his estate. But that discussion never occurs as Ray Atlee, a law school professor, arrives to find that his father has died in his sleep. In addition a last-minute will is discovered. His wayward younger brother Forrest is little concerned other than for Ray, the named executor of the estate, to not cheat him out of his share of what seems to be a rather modest estate. But Ray's simple administrative task gets abruptly complicated when he discovers millions in boxes stuffed in a cabinet.

Ray decides to remove the money from the Judge's house, place it in a storage rental unit in his Virginia college town, and determine the source of the money and who knows about it. He almost immediately becomes concerned that he is being watched. "The Summons" basically follows Ray in his inter-state travels and his paranoia over the stash of money. Break-ins of his apartment and photographs of the storage unit received in the mail intensify his apprehension. He is able through some skillful subterfuges to narrow the potential list of sources of the money as well as those who may know of it.

As some reviewers have noted, the book becomes a little repetitious in following Ray's journeys and his incessant moving and guarding of the money. The plot borders on the too simple with such concerns as the authenticity of a last minute will not being timely examined. And the ending is almost predictable and slightly confusing at the same time. This is hardly the most gripping Grisham novel that I have read to this point.

Ray Atlee is summoned back to his childhood home by his ailing father, Judge Reuban Atlee. Judge Atlee is dying of cancer and, presumably, wants to settle his estate with his sons, Ray and Forrest. However, when Ray arrives at the home, he finds his father already dead. The estate doesn't amount to very much. However, as Ray searches the house on his own, he comes upon a large sum of money not accounted for in the will. The cash totals 3.5 million dollars. After the house is broken into and searched, Ray realizes he is not the only one who knows about the money. As he takes the time to decide how he should handle the situation, he becomes more and more threatened by the shadowy presence of his pursuers.
John Grisham, as one of the world's bestselling and best known writers, should set a very high standard for himself. The reason he is so well regarded is much in evidence here. The writing is very strong with a profound sense of place. The characters are well thought out and it is their vivid realism that propels the story along. In a sense, Ray Atlee reminds me of the Dick Francis hero with his strong set of values which must be upheld at any cost. This may be one of John Grisham's best novels in quite some time. However, even at his most mediocre, he is better than the vast majority of writers working today.

Different isn't always good with Grisham but here it is. Sure, it's more lawyer junk but isn't that why we read him?

You really feel the story's lead character as he searches in this yarn and Grisham takes that character - and us - to a strange place to finish but that's just fine.

Don't expect a bombshell ending, the story doesn't need one. Just expect a good story.

This book has taken a fair bit of flack by reviewers and I feel that they're being a bit harsh on the author. It's certainly a smaller book than he usually writes and lighter in content but I've given it 4 stars for being a smooth and interesting read...not everything has to be heavy and punchy. Ray Atlee, a professor of law at a southern university, is summoned home by his distatorial father, a prominent judge who was never able to astablish a rapport with his two sons.On finding his father dead on the sofa of his living room, Ray also discovers $3 million in notes, packed into boxes. He decides not to tell his brother Forrest of his find immediately as Forrest is a drug addict who would almost certainly kill himself with drink and drugs.Ray then sets out to discover where the money came from and enters a world of big money with all of its attendant risks.