Whistler by John Grisham.

BIBLIOGRAPHIC DETAILS:
Print: COPYRIGHT: October 25, 2016; ISBN: 978-0385541190; PUBLISHER: Doubleday; First Printing edition; PAGES: 384; UNABRIDGED
Digital: Yes

*Audio: COPYRIGHT: 10/25/2016; ISBN: ‎ 9780399565168; PUBLISHER: Books on Tape; DURATION: 13:10:33; PARTS: 11; File Size: 379877 KB; Unabridged; (Overdrive: LAPL)

Feature Film or tv: No

SERIES: “The Whistler” Book 2 (AKA Book 1, as the first was a short story prequel)

MAIN CHARACTERS:
Junior Mace – Defendant
Claudia McDover – Judge
Lacy Stoltz – Board of Judicial Conduct Investigator
Hugo Hatch - Board of Judicial Conduct Investigator
Verna Hatch – Hugo’s wife
Justin Barrow - Board of Judicial Conduct Investigator


SUMMARY/ EVALUATION:
How I picked it. It was next in line of my John Grisham reads.
What it was about: A judge whose professional conduct has come into question.
What I thought: Another great page-turner.

AUTHOR:
John Grisham:
From Wikipedia:
“Grisham, the second of five children, was born in Jonesboro, Arkansas, to Wanda (née Skidmore) and John Ray Grisham.[6] His father was a construction worker and a cotton farmer, and his mother was a homemaker.[9] When Grisham was four years old, his family settled in Southaven, Mississippi, a suburb of Memphis, Tennessee.[6]
As a child, he wanted to be a baseball player.[8] As noted in the foreword to Calico Joe, Grisham gave up playing baseball at the age of 18, after a game in which a pitcher aimed a beanball at him, and narrowly missed doing the young Grisham grave harm.
Although Grisham's parents lacked formal education, his mother encouraged him to read and prepare for college.[1] He drew on his childhood experiences for his novel A Painted House.[6] Grisham started working for a plant nursery as a teenager, watering bushes for $1.00 an hour. He was soon promoted to a fence crew for $1.50 an hour. He wrote about the job: "there was no future in it". At 16, Grisham took a job with a plumbing contractor but says he "never drew inspiration from that miserable work".[10]
Through one of his father's contacts, he managed to find work on a highway asphalt crew in Mississippi at age 17. It was during this time that an unfortunate incident got him "serious" about college. A fight with gunfire broke out among the crew causing Grisham to run to a nearby restroom to find safety. He did not come out until after the police had detained the perpetrators. He hitchhiked home and started thinking about college. His next work was in retail, as a salesclerk in a department store men's underwear section, which he described as "humiliating". By this time, Grisham was halfway through college. Planning to become a tax lawyer, he was soon overcome by "the complexity and lunacy" of it. He decided to return to his hometown as a trial lawyer.[11]
He attended the Northwest Mississippi Community College in Senatobia, Mississippi and later attended Delta State University in Cleveland.[6] Grisham changed colleges three times before completing a degree.[1] He eventually graduated from Mississippi State University in 1977, receiving a B.S. degree in accounting. He later enrolled in the University of Mississippi School of Law to become a tax lawyer, but his interest shifted to general civil litigation. He graduated in 1981 with a J.D. degree.[6]
After leaving law school, he participated in some missionary work in Brazil, under the First Baptist Church of Oxford.[12]”

NARRATOR:
Cassandra Campbell:
From Audible:
“As Cassandra Campbell has said, "A good audiobook narrator is somebody who can get out of the way and let the story be the primary thing." And no one embodies this more than Campbell herself, who has hundreds of audiobooks credits to her name and delivers each one with refreshing clarity and honesty. For her efforts, she’s been decorated with multiple Audie Awards, Earphones Awards, the prestigious Odyssey Award, among numerous other honors.
When it comes to her repertoire, no one is a more versatile narrator than Cassandra Campbell. She’s the voice of some of the most interesting thrillers of the past decade, including Everything I Never Told You, Bird Box, and Dark Places, and has also narrated so many inspiring nonfiction stories about strong women, such as The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, The Girls of Atomic City, and Orange is the New Black. She has also performed in some of the best ensemble casts of all time, as in Kathryn Stockett’s The Help, which set a new bar for audiobook artistry when it was released in 2009.
Campbell has always been an avid reader and has loved reading aloud; she recalls making her siblings listen to her read James and the Giant Peach and Grimm’s Fairy Tales when they were in elementary school. She didn’t officially get into audiobook narration until much later, though, when she was doing commercial voice-overs and a friend connected her with Books on Tape. Cassandra Campbell loves the opportunity to tell stories and to be part of a tradition that goes all the way back to the Homeric epic.
While she’s done some stage acting, audiobooks have become the center of Cassandra Campbell’s performing career. In recent years she’s also ventured into success with audiobook directing, opting for a collaborative style that allows for an organic, intimate performance. She’s even worn the hat of both director and narrator on a single title in Dark Places by Gillian Flynn. "That was a big journey for me," she says.”

*I enjoyed Cassandra’s narration. With audiobooks, you don’t have the benefit of the visuals – the beginnings of sentences, chapter breaks, or any indications of who is speaking, so I like a narrator who helps me to at least know who is speaking. Not all fabulous actors are fabulous narrators. Some actors will do a few voices, if the character has something obvious, like a smoker’s voice, or an accent from a home town, but they may not change their voice between male and female speakers, or other nuances. Cassandra does pretty well with this.

GENRE:
Fiction; Literature; Suspense; Thriller

TIME FRAME:
Contemporary (2011)

LOCATION:
Tappacola reservation vicinity; Brunswick County; Florida

SUBJECTS:
Lawyers; Criminals; Courts; Judges; Murder; Corruption; Conspiracy; Mobsters; Casinos

DEDICATION:
Not found

SAMPLE QUOTATION:
From Chapter :
“As lawyers, they valued their time. As investigators, they had learned patience. The two roles were often in conflict.

At 2:00 p.m., they gave up and returned to the car, as smothering as a sauna. As Lacy turned the key, her cell phone rattled. Caller unknown. She grabbed it and said, “Yes.”

A male voice said, “I asked you to come alone.” It was Randy.

“I suppose you have the right to ask. We were supposed to meet at noon, for lunch.”

A pause, then, “I’m at the Municipal Marina, at the end of King Street, three blocks away. Tell your buddy to get lost and we’ll talk.”

“Look, Randy, I’m not a cop and I don’t do cloak-and-dagger very well. I’ll meet you, say hello and all that, but if I don’t have your real name within sixty seconds then I’m leaving.”

“Fair enough.”

She canceled the call and mumbled, “Fair enough.”

—

The marina was busy with pleasure craft and a few fishing boats coming and going. A long pontoon was unloading a gaggle of noisy tourists. A restaurant with a patio at the water’s edge was still doing a brisk business. Crews on charter boats were spraying decks and sprucing things up for tomorrow’s charters.

Lacy walked along the central pier, looking for the face of a man she’d never met. Ahead, standing next to a fuel pump, an aging beach bum gave a slight, awkward wave and nodded. She returned the nod and kept walking. He was about sixty, with too much gray hair flowing from under a Panama hat. Shorts, sandals, a gaudy floral-print shirt, the typical bronze, leathery skin of someone who spent far too much time in the sun. His eyes were covered by aviator shades. With a smile he stepped forward and said, “You must be Lacy Stoltz.”

She took his hand and said, “Yes, and you are?”

“Name’s Ramsey Mix. A pleasure to meet you.”

“A pleasure. We were supposed to meet at noon.”

“My apologies. Had a bit of boat trouble.” He nodded down the pier to a large powerboat moored at the end of the dock. It wasn’t the longest boat in the harbor at that moment, but it was close. “Can we talk there?” he asked.

“On the boat?”

“Sure. It’s much more private.”

Crawling onto a boat with a complete stranger struck her as a bad idea and she hesitated. Before she could answer, Mix asked, “Who’s the black guy?” He was looking in the direction of King Street. Lacy turned and saw Hugo casually following a pack of tourists nearing the marina.

“He’s my colleague,” she said.

“Sort of a bodyguard?”

“I don’t need a bodyguard, Mr. Mix. We’re not armed, but my friend there could pitch you into the water in about two seconds.”

“Let’s hope that won’t be necessary. I come in peace.”

“That’s good to hear. I’ll get on the boat only if it stays where it is. If the engines start, then our meeting is over.”

“Fair enough.”

She followed him along the pier, past a row of sailboats that looked as though they had not seen the open sea in months, and to his boat, cleverly named "Conspirator". He stepped on board and offered a hand to help her. On the deck, under a canvas awning, there was a small wooden table with four folding chairs. He waved at it and said, “Welcome aboard. Have a seat.”

Lacy took quick stock of her surroundings. Without sitting, she said, “Are we alone?”

“Well, not entirely. I have a friend who enjoys boating with me. Name is Carlita. Would you like to meet her?”

“Only if she’s important to your story.”

“She is not.” Mix was looking at the marina, where Hugo was leaning on a rail. Hugo waved, as if to say, “I’m watching everything.” Mix waved back and said, “Can I ask you something?”

“Sure,” Lacy said.

“Is it safe to assume that whatever I’m about to tell you will be rehashed with Mr. Hatch in short order?”

“He’s my colleague. We work together on some cases, maybe this one How do you know his name?”

“I happen to own a computer. Checked out the website. BJC really should update it.”

“I know Budget cuts.”

“His name vaguely rings a bell.”

“He had a brief career as a football player at Florida State.”

“Maybe that’s it. I’m a Gator fan myself.”

Lacy refused to respond to this. It was so typical of the South, where folks attached themselves to college football teams with a fanaticism she’d always found irksome.

Mix said, “So he’ll know everything?”

“Yes.”

“Call him over. I’ll get us something to drink.””

RATING:.
5

STARTED READING – FINISHED READING
1-1-2023 to 1-14-2023
( )

This book is about a whistleblower. The story involves an organization that investigates (potentially) corrupt judges in Florida. Two of these investigators receive a complaint about a judge who is involved in an embezzlement scheme. When they start to investigate, they discover that a casino on an Indian reservation may be involved, but they need to obey tribal laws. There are several players involved in the scheme and once they find out about the investigation, things get dangerous. ( )

Suspense

I was recommended this book by GoodReads, so thought I'd give it a try. I listened to it on audio, and enjoyed that format very much. This book is well-written, and a page-turner. Grisham has delved into the world of corrupt judges in this one, and we meet Lacy Stoltz, a woman who is willing to take on this particular judge. Little does she realize the cost that will be incurred by doing so, and little does she realize that her life and the life of people that she loves will be placed in grave danger. Lacey is a lawyer for the Florida Board on Judicial Conduct (FBJC). Her job is to investigate and put a case together to gather information on corrupt judges in the state of Florida. She doesn't carry a weapon, and she usually works with one other person, not a whole police force. Then she and her partner Hugo meet a formerly disbarred lawyer by the name of Greg Myers and things start to get really dicey right away. They find out that this particular judge is affiliated with a notorious Florida crime boss and his many crooked family members. It turns into a deadly cat and mouse game that has Lacey dodging assassination at every corner. This is apparently the first book in a new legal thriller series written by Grisham. It was a great listen, and i will continue this series. ( )

As with most Grisham books - the characters pull you into the story. This was a thrilling listen. ( )