A page turner and a pleasure to read… The kind of book that nourishes compulsive readers.

The Runaway Jury is marked as suspense, but I didn’t think there was much suspenseful about it. Nicholas Easter is selected as a juror in a tobacco trial. He’s a friendly guy with two years of law school behind him and all the jurors respect him and sometimes even look to him to explain what’s going on.

Inside the courtroom, the plaintiff is trying to prove that a man died directly from cigarette smoking. They throw in all sorts of obscure facts about advertising and targetting kids. Things that are supposed to make the jury hate cigarettes, but these things have nothing to do with the case. The defense, in my opinion, is very weak in this case.

But the book isn’t really about the trial, it’s about the jury and what goes on behind the scenes. I’m really afraid to serve on a jury for a large trial now. Both the defense and plaintiff trail all prospective jurors and gather as much dirt on them as they can. Once jury selection is complete, the defense goes to work on influencing each of the jurors. Sometimes they use their spouses to get to them. Sometimes they do so directly with a dirty little secret.

Rankin Fitch works for the big tobacco companies and is, in effect, running this operation. He is very perceptive and can probably tell you your life history just by looking at you. Fitch starts getting notes and phone calls from a woman named Marlee and it doesn’t take long before Fitch realizes that Marlee knows exactly what’s going on and Nicholas Easter is working with her somehow to control the jury.

The question is, what does Marlee want, why is she doing this? Both her and Nicholas seem to have appeared out of thin air and Fitch must track them down and learn their dirty little secrets in order to get the upper hand. Will he be too late?