The Guardians by John Grisham
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
The Guardians is a typical John Grisham novel. That is to say, it is well-written and the legal acumen is superb. This book is the story of a storefront legal office in Savannah that scours the prisons for innocent inmates – not only innocent, but who have a decent chance of exoneration by a group of limited manpower and means. The protagonist is Cullen Post of Guardian Ministries, a lawyer who is also an Episcopal priest. He takes on a client, Quincy Miller, who was railroaded on a murder charge in a corrupt Florida town and has been languishing in prison for over twenty years. As the story commences, it becomes known that there are still some bad guys around who would like to keep Miller in jail and the murder case closed. So an atmosphere of danger has been established.
The book faithfully chronicles Post’s investigation of Miller’s case, which takes him back and forth across the southeastern US, where he meets many interesting and well-drawn characters. In the early stages of the investigation, no one outside of Miller and Guardian Ministries even knows someone is looking into the case, so the impending sense of doom is still present, but not imminent. However, Post knows that at some point, the people who engineered Miller’s conviction will become aware of Guardian’s activities, and consequences may ensue.
The climax comes in an unexpected manner about two-thirds of the way through, but then Post and Guardian get the almighty FBI involved, who bring the bad guys are swiftly to heel. So the last third of the book is simply a detailed account of Miller’s exoneration (a foregone conclusion by now), which isn’t really very suspenseful. Grisham has had a problem with endings since he began writing, and he can also become immersed in the legal details that he knows so well, at the expense of the story. That’s why I’ve docked the book a star. However, the Guardians is still a fascinating read, well worth the time.
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