Product Description

Ray Atlee is a professor of law at the university of Virginia who is forty-three and newly single. He has a father, a very sick old man who lives alone in the ancestral home in Clanton, Mississippi; a beloved and powerful official who has towered over local law and politics for many years and is now a recluse. With the end in sight, Judge Atlee issues a summons to Ray to return home to Clanton, to discuss the details of his estate. Ray reluctantly heads south. But the meeting does not take place. The Judge dies too soon, and in doing so leaves behind a shocking secret known only to Ray. And perhaps someone else.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #81242 in Books
• Published on: 2002-03-01
• Released on: 2002-11-27
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 400 pages

Amazon.co.uk Review
An intelligent, low-key thriller, The Summons continues John Grisham's exploration of the common decencies of a strain of American commercial story-telling in literature and film that we often link to the work of Frank Capra or O Henry. He is not afraid of parable or of setting up situations that are at once archetypal and attractively specific. This is a tale of two brothers--one is righteous, more or less, and one is not--and a question of their inheritance. Ancient Mississippi judge Atlee summons his two sons to his deathbed, but dies before he can explain himself, leaving Ray, who arrives on time unlike his drunkard brother Forest with the difficult problem of the three million dollars in used notes which are lying around the house in shoe-boxes. Ray worries about his father's posthumous reputation, about the Inland Revenue Service and about how quickly Forrest could drink himself to death with unlimited funds.

Grisham is very acute indeed on how the best of intentions lead Ray not to any significant crime or atrocity but to quietly unconscionable behaviour. And then he realises he is being followed... Grisham can build suspense out of remarkably little and has a real gift for understanding the quiet anxieties of an ordinary man. --Roz Kaveney

Review
Newly single law professor Ray Atlee is called back to his Mississippi family home by his dying father, a powerful official who has towered over local law and politics for many years. But before he reaches his father the old man dies and leaves behind a shocking secret known only to Ray - and perhaps someone else.

Praise for The Summons
‘John Grisham is a copper-bottomed promise of reliable story-telling… the legal trappings are as persuasive as ever’ The Independent

Customer Reviews

Could do better Mr Grisham!
I am a massive John Grisham fan having read every one of his books. I waited with anticipation for this book, and was very disappointed. The characters are very difficult to relate to and the plot is very weak. It is not a page turner like other Grisham novels and I read the book in one sitting.
Finding 3 million dollars in your dead fathers house is a good idea, but Grisham does not really develop the plot. The book is basically about what to do with it. Keep it, or give some to the brother who incidently is a drug addict and the money could destroy him? Yawn. There are so many possibilities for the plot, but they are under developed and the ending is rubbish. There is no action and fast pace like previous Grisham novels. Disappointing, but I recommend all other John Grisham titles!!

Not as good as his other books!
I really didn't enjoy this book as much as I have the other Grisham books. It just didn't seem to have the old Grisham oomph that his earlier books had and to be brutal was a bit boring and predictable. With his other books I could not wait to get back to find out what happened next.....not this one. I only finished it because it felt like a mission. Very disappointing.

A listless Grisham should take a break
Lazy, tired writing. The central characters lack of a life, of friends, his pale watercolour existence, reflects it seems to me, Grisham's state of mind. "Must churn out another book," appears to be his modus operandi in writing this. It is listless, the professor's reactions seem odd for a man of his intelligence, trawling up and down the country obsessively dragging the money around with him is patently odd. Would he really be petrified of the taxes on the money, given the resultant number would still be huge? Ultimately he had to declare it to his brother anyway so why all the contrived fuss? Grisham's novels typically have to bend to the unlikely improbable human reaction to move the plot on; this story took it to a new extreme.

But, it was readable, even at low ebb Grisham can still get the reader turning pages. Unfortunately at the end of this one only shrugs ones shoulders and moves on. Where's the pace, the energy of the early books I wonder. Is Grisham written out and should he take a sabbatical himself. I think there are clues in the novel; the professor is on the edge of a sabbatical, there is a book that he needs to write but it's only a chore to him. I suspect Grisham is right there with him. Take a break John, and come back refreshed and stronger