Mr. Grisham did it again. He's back in the game, on his familiar turf, the thing that made him a rich man.

Unusually, the book started with a verdict. If you want to know what happens after the end of Erin Brokovich (Julia Roberts) and A Civil Action (John Travolta), this is it. The case was Jeanette Baker v. Krane Chemical. Baker, the widow, survived her husband and son, who died of cancer which supposedly caused by irresponsible and illegal chemical disposal by Krane Chemical in a small town in Mississippi. The disposal and spillage contaminated the water that run through their town, and so great was the rates of cancer---15 times above the national average---that their Cary County was infamously known as Cancer County.

This is a story about David versus Goliath, where David was the dejected victims and their lawyers who had lost all their money in pursuit of justice, and Goliath was Krane Chemical, the evil corporate America, with Carl Trudeau as the owner, a Wall Street predator.

But actually... Goliath was even bigger than that. Because Trudeau found the supreme court judges were not friendly enough, he decided to buy a judicial seat in the upcoming election. Millions and millions of dollar poured down to launch the oblivious perfect-and-straight-to-the-core candidate, and tricks after dirty tricks of campaigning were whipped out, without the voters having a single clue what was behind all the drama.

In the course of reading about the campaign, I sometimes forgot about Jeanette Baker and the victims of Cancer County. Thus was the state of politics, in my humble opinion. The people is forgotten and the big goal is on the main stage, lashing out pretty but poisonous promises to unsuspecting voters, not unlike a wolf in sheep's clothing.

Mr. Grisham was adamant to show us the uglier facade of politics. Sometimes he got a little carried away picturing the goody-goody David and the heartless Trudeau. But hey, what's a fiction without such extremes?

All in all, it's a good one from Mr. Grisham, who had distracted over the years to the land of baseball (Bleachers), Italiano la dolce vita (The Broker), baseball plus Italiano la dolce vita (Playing for Pizza), and nonfiction (The Innocent Man). This is a legal thriller dripping with sarcasms and so much personal view on politics and justice system. Never again you will see electoral process and politics the same way.