The whistler

John Grisham

Large print - 2016

Lacy Stoltz is an investigator for the Florida Board on Judicial Conduct. She is a lawyer, not a cop, and it is her job to respond to complaints dealing with judicial misconduct. After nine years with the Board, she knows that most problems are caused by incompetence, not corruption. But a corruption case eventually crosses her desk. A previously disbarred lawyer is back in business with a new identity. He now goes by the name Greg Myers, and he claims to know of a Florida judge who has stolen more money than all other crooked judges combined. And not just crooked judges in Florida. All judges, from all states, and throughout U.S. history. What's the source of the ill-gotten gains? It seems the judge was secretly involved with the cons...truction of a large casino on Native American land. The Coast Mafia financed the casino and is now helping itself to a sizable skim of each month's cash. The judge is getting a cut and looking the other way. It's a sweet deal: Everyone is making money. But now Greg wants to put a stop to it. His only client is a person who knows the truth and wants to blow the whistle and collect millions under Florida law. Greg files a complaint with the Board on Judicial Conduct, and the case is assigned to Lacy Stoltz, who immediately suspects that this one could be dangerous. Dangerous is one thing. Deadly is something else.

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Subjects
Genres
Large type books
Legal stories
Suspense fiction
Published
New York : Random House Large Print [2016]
Language
English
Main Author
John Grisham (-)
Physical Description
496 pages ; 24 cm
ISBN
9780399565205
Contents unavailable.
Review by New York Times Review

A FEW MONTHS AGO, I received an email that stopped me cold: "Hey, man, I guess we haven't communicated since you wrote my obit," it began. "I've been home from prison for more than two years." The email was from Dickie Scruggs, one of America's most famous and richest trial lawyers. In 2007, as a reporter at The Wall Street Journal, I had written Scruggs's obituary, or at least his professional one, after he was charged with trying to pay a Mississippi judge a $40,000 bribe. I traveled to Oxford, Miss., where I interviewed Scruggs in his stately offices overlooking the town's picturesque courthouse square. Even under indictment, he had oozed country-lawyer charm. Scruggs was something out of a John Grisham novel. And, it turned out, the author and Scruggs were pals. "This doesn't sound like the Dickie Scruggs that I know," Grisham said at the time, wondering how he could be "involved in such a boneheaded bribery scam that's not in the least bit sophisticated." There's nothing boneheaded or unsophisticated about the judicial bribery scam at the heart of Grisham's riveting new novel. Set in the Florida panhandle, "The Whistler" centers on an elaborate conspiracy involving an Indian reservation, an organized crime syndicate and a crooked judge skimming a small fortune from the tribal casino's monthly haul. Grisham's heroine is Lacy Stoltz, an investigator for Florida's judicial conduct board whose most interesting case, after nine years on the job, has been ousting a lecherous judge who preyed on women with divorces on his docket. But Stoltz's career receives a jolt when a shady mole, looking to collect millions as a whistle-blower, tips her off to the conspiracy. Grisham has been criticized for not writing strong female characters, but Stoltz is finely drawn: "The truth was that, at the age of 36, Lacy was content to live alone, to sleep in the center of the bed, to clean up only after herself, to make and spend her own money, to come and go as she pleased, to pursue her career without worrying about his, to plan her evenings with input from no one else, to cook or not to cook, and to have sole possession of the remote control." The judge is also a woman - Claudia McDover, a former small-town lawyer with a fondness for Chanel handbags, Picasso lithographs and private planes. Suspiciously, these expensive tastes emerged only after she'd overseen the land-use litigation that eased the construction of the tribal casino. She also presided over the murder trial of a Native American opposed to gambling on the reservation. Now on death row, he insists he was framed. Grisham fans looking for courtroom drama might be disappointed by "The Whistler," since McDover's questionable cases are glossed over. The book feels more like the first half of an episode of "Law & Order," with much of the story focused on Stoltz and her crime-fighting squad as they snoop around gated communities and golf courses, chasing a basket of Florida deplorables who would make Carl Hiaasen proud. As ever, Grisham sprinkles "The Whistler" with sharp observations about lawyers. He describes one as a "ham-and-egg street hustler with two billboards to his name, and a practice that yearned for lucrative car wrecks but survived on workers' comp and midlevel drug cases." Or this, which rings true: "Lawyers could usually be trusted to keep secrets that involve their own clients, but were often horrible gossips when it came to everyone else." Those horrible gossips helped me almost a decade ago: Every lawyer in Oxford, Miss., wanted to dish about Dickie Scruggs. Today he runs a foundation that helps people obtain their high school equivalency diplomas. I emailed Scruggs and told him Grisham's new novel was about a judicial bribery conspiracy, albeit far different from the one that brought him down. "I had a good visit with Grisham a few weeks ago at an Ole Miss football game," Scruggs replied. Then he did some logrolling for his old friend. "Like millions of his fans, I can't wait to read 'The Whistler.'" PETER LATTMAN is the managing director of media at Emerson Collective.

Copyright (c) The New York Times Company [November 13, 2016]
Review by Booklist Review

Grisham suffers from the paradox that has bedeviled John Steinbeck and Tom Wolfe: he's very popular, and that's probably why nobody likes him. His books are all alike, we hear, and the law his legal thrillers are based on is mighty shaky. Grumps will find more of the same here, as they wonder why they can't put the book down. Lacy Stoltz is an investigator for the understaffed, underfunded, and overworked Florida Board on Judicial Conduct, looking into complaints against judges. She's pulled into a case that an informant says involves corruption at a level never before known in this country. The unfolding that follows is appropriately grandiose, featuring a judge who removes all legal roadblocks to a developer's crooked scheme and is made filthy rich in return. Grisham enjoys his crooks as much as his heroes, and his glee in detailing the minutiae of his characters' lives plus his restless, propulsive writing, punctuated with just a dab of irony draws one compulsively to the trumpets-blaring finale. Improbable? Who cares? It's hard not to surrender to storytelling on this level. HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: In terms of commercial success and critical disdain (undeserved this time), Grisham is second only to James Patterson.--Crinklaw, Don Copyright 2016 Booklist

From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review

Lawyer Lacy Stolz, the heroine of this tense legal thriller from bestseller Grisham (Rogue Lawyer), investigates complaints against judges for the Florida Board on Judicial Misconduct. In her nine years on the job, there has never been any danger in her assignments; the justices are often more incompetent than corrupt. Everything changes when Stolz and a colleague, Hugo Hatch, meet with a disbarred lawyer, who-eager to collect a whistleblower's reward-has evidence of corruption unlike anything they have ever handled. A judge in the pocket of the Coast Mafia has spent years skimming millions from a Native American-owned casino. At least three people have been murdered to cover up the graft, and an innocent man sits on death row, but few are willing to help Stolz and Hatch expose the corruption. The casino keeps the money flowing, and stepping forward could be deadly. A lead brings Stolz and Hatch onto tribal land, where they find themselves caught in a trap. A high-stakes game of gambling, greed, and murder plays out in another page-turner from a master storyteller. (Oct.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.


Review by Library Journal Review

In his latest legal thriller (after Rogue Lawyer), Grisham addresses a timely and sensitive topic-who judges prominent judges who break the law? Lacy Stolz, a lawyer who examines instances of judicial misconduct for the Florida Board on Judicial Conduct, usually investigates issues of incompetence, but now she's entrenched in a corruption case. Greg Myers, a disbarred lawyer practicing under an assumed identity, claims his client, a state employee too scared to pursue a claim under the Florida Whistleblower Law, has uncovered some dirt about circuit court judge Claudia McDover, who apparently is in the pocket of the local Mafia. In exchange for rigging trials, McDover skims her share from Indian casinos and launders it with the assistance of a friendly trust and estate lawyer. This case, with its close connections to the mob, becomes a dangerous and deadly assignment for Lacy and Hugo Hatch, her married assistant who's struggling to raise his family. Verdict This captivating and suspenseful tale offers a welcome reminder of how Grisham expertly and entertainingly interweaves his story line with the mechanics of the legal process. [See Prepub Alert, 4/25/16.]-Jerry P. Miller. Cambridge, MA © Copyright 2016. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review

"I started dreaming of getting rich, which, in Florida anyway, can lead to serious trouble": another blockbuster in the making from Grisham (Rogue Lawyer, 2015, etc.), the ascended master of the legal procedural.If justice is blind, it is also served, in theory, by incorruptible servants. Emphasize "in theory," for as Grisham's latest opens, judicial investigator Lacy Stoltz is confronted with the unpleasant possibility that a highly regarded judge may be on the take. The charge comes, discreetly, from a former lawyer-turned-jailbird-turned-lawyer again, who spins out a seemingly improbable tale of racketeering that weds the best elements of Gulf Coast society with the worst, from the brilliant legal minds of Tallahassee to some very unpleasant lads once styled as the Catfish Mafia, now reborn in an alt-version, the Coast Mafia. Lacy's brief is to find out just how rotten the rotten judge isand the answer is plenty. Naturally, this knowledge is not acquired without cost; the body count rises, bad things happen to good people, and for a time, at least, the villains get away with murder and more. Grisham has never been strong on characterization: Lacy, we learn, is content to be single, "to live alone, to sleep in the center of the bed, to clean up only after herself," and so forth, but beyond that the reader doesn't get much sense of what drives her to put herself in the way of flying bullets and sneering counsel: "His associate was Ian Archer, an unsmiling sort who refused to shake hands with anyone and reeked of surliness." In laid-back Florida? Indeed, and in Grisham's busy hands, a lot of players come and go, some fated to sleep with the manatees. Yes, it's formula. Yes, it's not as gritty an exercise in swamp mayhem as Hiaasen, Buchanan, or Crews might turn in. But, like eating a junk burger, even though you probably shouldn't, it's plenty satisfying. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

1 The satellite radio was playing soft jazz, a compromise. Lacy, the owner of the Prius and thus the radio, loathed rap almost as much as Hugo, her passenger, loathed contemporary country. They had failed to agree on sports talk, public radio, golden oldies, adult comedy, and the BBC, without getting near bluegrass, CNN, opera, or a hundred other stations. Out of frustration on her part and fatigue on his, they both threw in the towel early and settled on soft jazz. Soft, so Hugo's deep and lengthy nap would not be disturbed. Soft, because Lacy didn't care much for jazz either. It was another give-and-take of sorts, one of many that had sustained their teamwork over the years. He slept and she drove and both were content. Before the Great Recession, the Board on Judicial Conduct had access to a small pool of state-owned Hondas, all with four doors and white paint and low mileage. With budget cuts, though, those disappeared. Lacy, Hugo, and countless other public employees in Florida were now expected to use their own vehicles for the state's work, reimbursed at fifty cents a mile. Hugo, with four kids and a hefty mortgage, drove an ancient Bronco that could barely make it to the office, let alone a road trip. And so he slept. Lacy enjoyed the quiet. She handled most of her cases alone, as did her colleagues. Deeper cuts had decimated the office, and the BJC was down to its last six investigators. Seven, in a state of twenty million people, with a thousand judges sitting in six hundred courtrooms and processing a half a million cases a year. Lacy was forever grateful that almost all judges were honest, hardworking people committed to justice and equality. Otherwise, she would have left long ago. The small number of bad apples kept her busy fifty hours a week. She gently touched the signal switch and slowed on the exit ramp. When the car rolled to a stop, Hugo lurched forward as if wide awake and ready for the day. "Where are we?" he asked. "Almost there. Twenty minutes. Time for you to roll to your right and snore at the window." "Sorry. Was I snoring?" "You always snore, at least according to your wife." "Well, in my defense, I was walking the floor at three this morning with her latest child. I think it's a girl. What's her name?" "Wife or daughter?" "Ha‑ha." The lovely and ever-pregnant Verna kept few secrets when it came to her husband. It was her calling to keep his ego in check and it was no small task. In another life, Hugo had been a football star in high school, then the top-rated signee in his class at Florida State, and the first freshman to crack the starting lineup. He'd been a tailback, both bruising and dazzling, for three and a half games anyway, until they carried him off on a stretcher with a jammed vertebra in his upper spine. He vowed to make a comeback. His mother said no. He graduated with honors and went to law school. His glory days were fading fast, but he would always carry some of the swagger possessed by all-Americans. He couldn't help it. "Twenty minutes, huh?" he grunted. "Sure, or not. If you like, I'll just leave you in the car with the motor running and you can sleep all day."  He rolled to his right, closed his eyes, and said, "I want a new partner." "That's an idea, but the problem is nobody else will have you." "And one with a bigger car." "It gets fifty miles a gallon." He grunted again, grew still, then twitched, jerked, mumbled, and sat straight up. He rubbed his eyes and said, "What are we listening to?" "We had this conversation a long time ago, when we left Tallahassee, just as you were beginning to hibernate." "I offered to drive, as I recall." "Yes, with one eye open. It meant so much. How's Pippin?" "She cries a lot. Usually, and I say this from vast experience, when a newborn cries it's for a reason. Food, water, diaper, momma--whatever. Not this one. She squawks for the hell of it. You don't know what you're missing." "If you'll recall, I've actually walked the floors with Pippin on two occasions." "Yes, and God bless you. Can you come over tonight?" "Anytime. She's number four. You guys thought about birth control?" "We are beginning to have that conversation. And now that we're on the subject, how's your sex life?" "Sorry. My mistake." At thirty-six Lacy was single and attractive, and her sex life was a rich source of whispered curiosity around the office. They were going east toward the Atlantic Ocean. St. Augustine was eight miles ahead. Lacy finally turned off the radio when Hugo asked, "And you've been here before?" "Yes, a few years back. Then boyfriend and I spent a week on the beach in a friend's condo." "A lot of sex?" "Here we go again. Is your mind always in the gutter?" "Well, come to think of it, the answer has to be yes. Plus, you need to understand that Pippin is now a month old, which means that Verna and I have not had normal relations in at least three months. I still maintain, at least to myself, that she cut me off three weeks too early, but it's sort of a moot point. Can't really go back and catch up, you know? So things are fairly ramped up in my corner; not sure she feels the same way. Three rug rats and a newborn do serious damage to that intimacy thing." "I'll never know." He tried to focus on the highway for a mile or two, then his eyelids grew heavy and he began to nod. She glanced at him and smiled. In her nine years with the Board, she and Hugo had worked a dozen cases together. They made a nice team and trusted each other, and both knew that any bad behavior by him, and there had been none to date, would immediately be reported to Verna. Lacy worked with Hugo, but she gossiped and shopped with Verna. St. Augustine was billed as the oldest city in America, the very spot where Ponce de León landed and began exploring. Long on history and heavy on tourism, it was a lovely town with historic buildings and thick Spanish moss dripping from ancient oaks. As they entered its outskirts, the traffic slowed and tour buses stopped. To the right and in the distance, an old cathedral towered above the town. Lacy remembered it all very well. The week with the old boyfriend had been a disaster, but she had fond memories of St. Augustine. One of many disasters. "And who is this mysterious deep throat we are supposed to meet?" Hugo asked, rubbing his eyes once again, now determined to stay awake. "Don't know yet, but his code name is Randy." "Okay, and please remind me why we are tag teaming a secret meeting with a man using an alias who has yet to file a formal complaint against one of our esteemed judges." "I can't explain. But I've talked to him three times on the phone and he sounds, uh, rather earnest." "Great. When was the last time you talked to a complaining party who didn't sound, uh, rather earnest?" "Stick with me, okay? Michael said go, and we're here." Michael was the director, their boss. "Of course. No clue as to the alleged unethical conduct?" "Oh yes. Randy said it was big." "Gee, never heard that before." They turned onto King Street and poked along with the downtown traffic. It was mid-July, still the high season in north Florida, and tourists in shorts and sandals drifted along the sidewalks, apparently going nowhere. Lacy parked on a side street and they joined the tourists. They found a coffee shop and killed half an hour flipping through glossy real estate brochures. At noon, as instructed, they walked into Luca's Grill and got a table for three. They ordered iced tea and waited. Thirty minutes passed with no sign of Randy, so they ordered sandwiches. Fries on the side for Hugo, fruit for Lacy. Eating as slowly as possible, they kept an eye on the door and waited. 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."     2 Carlita served drinks from a wooden tray--diet sodas for Lacy and Hugo, a bottle of beer for Mix. She was a pretty Hispanic lady, at least twenty years his junior, and she seemed pleased to have guests, especially another woman. Lacy made a note on her legal pad and said, "A quick question. The phone you used fifteen minutes ago had a different number than the phone you used last week." "Is that a question?" Mix replied. "It's close enough." "Okay. I use a lot of prepaid phones. And I move around all the time. I'm assuming the number I have for you is a cell phone issued by your employer, correct?" "That's right. We don't use personal phones for state business, so my number is not likely to change." "That'll make it simpler, I guess. My phones change by the month, sometimes by the week." So far, in their first five minutes together, everything Mix said had only opened the door for more questions. Lacy was still miffed at being stood up for lunch, and she didn't like the first impression he made. She said, "Okay, Mr. Mix, at this point Hugo and I go silent. You start talking. Tell us your story, and if it has huge gaps that require us to fish around and stumble in the dark, then we'll get bored and go home. You were coy enough on the phone to lure me here. Start talking." Mix looked at Hugo with a smile and asked, "She always this blunt?" Hugo, unsmiling, nodded yes. He folded his hands on the table and waited. Lacy put down her pen. Mix swallowed a mouthful of beer and began: "I practiced law for thirty years in Pensacola. Small firm--we usually had five or six lawyers. Back in the day we did well and life was good. One of my early clients was a developer, a real high roller who built condos, subdivisions, hotels, strip malls, the typical Florida stuff that goes up overnight. I never trusted the guy but he was making so much money I finally took the bait. He got me in some deals, small slices here and there, and for a while it all worked. I started dreaming of getting rich, which, in Florida anyway, can lead to serious trouble. My friend was cooking the books and taking on way too much debt, stuff I didn't know about. Turns out there were some bogus loans, bogus everything, really, and the FBI came in with one of its patented RICO cluster bombs and indicted half of Pensacola, me included. A lot of folks got burned--developers, bankers, realtors, lawyers, and other shysters. You probably didn't hear about it because you investigate judges, not lawyers. Anyway, I flipped, sang like a choirboy, got a deal, pled to one count of mail fraud, and spent sixteen months in a federal camp. Lost my license and made a lot of enemies. Now I lie low. I applied for reinstatement and got my license back. I have one client these days, and he's the guy we'll talk about from now on. Questions?" From the empty chair, he retrieved an unmarked file and handed it to Lacy. "Here's the scoop on me. Newspaper articles, my plea agreement, all the stuff you might need. I'm legit, or as legit an any ex-con can be, and every word I'm saying is true." Excerpted from The Whistler by John Grisham All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.