Name: The rainmaker
ISBN: 037543352X

John Grisham

The rainmaker

In his final semester of law school, Rudy Baylor "finds himself taking on one of the most powerful, corrupt, and ruthless companies in America -- and exposing a complex, multibillion-dollar insurance scam."

Geetika 

Simple, perfectly paced, perfectly characterised and change-provoking book. Loved it!

Jonathan Tysick

This book saw me through the days before, during and after my wife's long labour. One of Grisham's better novels. Satisfying, and interesting that it is written solely in the first person present.

Gayathri Jinesh

"I was handed a beautiful set of facts, a rotten but rich defendant, an incredibly sympathetic trial judge and one lucky break after another at trial"

I often search for such statements in books. One that describes 80 - 90% of what the book is about. And this, along with our protagonist being a saviour of a pretty, helpless girl, is what the Rainmaker is about.

Life happened to Rudy Baylor. Rudy Baylor didn't move in any direction. And for this reason, I found the first half terribly boring. Later on it picked up, when he actually started using his brains, to turn around the situations against him. He does a lot of paperwork, yeah. But we don't see that, in the book, which kind of creates an impression that he did nothing. Maybe the book's just honest. 
For a rookie, maybe it's just paperwork and a lucky break.
There are a few statements in the beginning, that gives us an idea of the actual practice of law. It's insightful.

It's witty, amusing, honest - a good one-time read.

It's summer in Memphis.  The sweat is sticking to Rudy Baylor's shirt and creditors are nipping at his heels.  Once he had aspirations of breezing through law school and punching his ticket to the good life.  Now he doesn't have a job or a prayer...except for one: an insurance dispute that leaves a family devastated and opens the door for a lawsuit, if Rudy can find a way to file it.By the time Rudy gets to court, a heavyweight corporate defense team is there to meet him. And suddenly he's in over his head, plunged into a nightmare of lies and legal maneuverings.  A case that started small is exploding into a thunderous million-dollar war of nerves, skill and outright violence--a fight that could cost one young lawyer his life, or turn him into the biggest rainmaker in the land....From the Paperback edition.

The Rainmaker

Summary:In his first courtroom thriller since A Time To Kill, John Grisham tells the story of a young man barely out of law school who finds himself taking on one of the most powerful, corrupt, and ruthless companies in America -- and exposing a complex, multibillion-dollar insurance scam. In hs final semester of law school Rudy Baylor is required to provide free legal advice to a group of senior citizens, and it is there that he meets his first "clients," Dot and Buddy Black. Their son, Donny Ray, is dying of leukemia, and their insurance company has flatly refused to pay for his medical treatments. While Rudy is at first skeptical, he soon realizes that the Blacks really have been shockingly mistreated by the huge company, and that he just may have stumbled upon one of the largest insurance frauds anyone's ever seen -- and one of the most lucrative and important cases in the history of civil litigation. The problem is, Rudy's flat broke, has no job, hasn't even passed the bar, and is about to go head-to-head with one of the best defense attorneys -- and powerful industries -- in America.

Perhaps one of the most moving Grisham novels of my time. Very relatable characters and situations.

Sarah Escorsa

I'm legitimately torn on this one. It is somewhere between a 2 and a 3 stars for me. What tipped it down was when Grisham forced me to read a male attorney questioning how a woman could be sexually harassed in quid pro quo situations because he doesn't believe she is attractive. And this is after really digging into how horrible she looks when he is interviewing her for the first time. Just, ugh.


I like the main story line. It is his typical David v Goliath, lawyer v evil company legal plot. But it is so bogged down by 2 extraneous plot lines that don't seem to ever actually correlate with the main plot that I was left scratching my head as to why they didn't get cut. It is rewarding to read and the only real reason I have ever read Grisham. Sometimes you just want to read the underdog winning.


The portrayal of females in general is disappointing. Both of the extraneous plotlines follow women who are victims and *need* this protagonist to help them. An abused wife who turns into a love interest and just needs to be walked step by step out of the relationship. And the old landlord who was supposed to be a client but is a victim of her family and needs him to save her.

It would have been so much better if we had ditched or cut a decent amount of extraneous material about his failed search for a job, living with the old woman, and especially that dumb love side-plot. We didn't need it. He's already the "hero," I don't know why he needed to save two additional women.