Review of “The Summons”

Ray Atlee is a Virgina law professor, recently divorced guy who gets a letter from his father- a once powerful judge in Clanton, Mississippi. His father orders him in the letter to come and meet him to settle the family estate. Ray’’s brother Forrest also receives such a letter.Once at his father’’s house, Ray finds that his father is dead and on searching the house he finds 3 million in cash hidden in a shoe box. He hides the money and doesn”t let anybody know about the money. His fathers friends help him to bury his father. He doesn”t understand who would gain from his father’’s death. This is the beginning of odd things happening to Ray. He is followed by someone who knows that he has 3 million. His efforts on hiding the money in a bank locker go waste as the unknown person pursuing him finds his locker and tries to ransack it. And all this while he can”t figure out how his father got the 3 million dollars. He wonders if his father used to gamble and tries to find out anything solid but it turns out that his father didn”t gamble. Then out of the blue he finds that his father had officiated in a case where he rewarded the plaintiffs generously. And the lawyer on the plaintiff side calls him and asks him to meet him.Ray does so and finds out that a man who worked for the lawyer may be behind the attacks on him(Ray). Finally Ray tired of all this trouble goes to his father’’s house and gets attacked. On the attacker’’s demand he leaves the money in the house and leaves the place. He receives a call from the afore mentioned lawyer that the man who was the lawyer’’s employee had been caught the previous day. Ray is totally surprised at this and gets to know who actually was behind the attacks on him and it totally shocks him. Read the book to find who that person was. It is a great twist and one should read it.Overall, I would rate the book 6 out of 10 but full marks to Grisham for the last twist.

~ by Anirudh on January 8, 2008.