I took a break from Grisham for a while when his books became a bit boring. Came back for “The Last Juror” and decided to keep going. This book wasn’t horrible, but it could have been better. Do I recommend it? Yes, if only because I REALLY want to go to Bologna on vacation now. Sounds divine.

as many of the other thrillers I’ve read. It slows down too much and focuses on the duller parts of the character’s daily life in Bologna. The beginning and end weren’t too bad. Would have appreciated a little more action and suspense thrown in, though. Even corny action/suspense. However, I loved the Italian in it – picked up a bit and now I want to learn it, too.

This book reinforces the fact that John Grisham is one of the best authors.

Makes me want to learn Italian.

February 2005 – Hardback book. I bought this a while back at Costco but I haven’t been reading “paper books” lately. I finally started it last night, though I only read about 3 pages. I just need to tear myself away from the computer long enough to get sucked in…

As usual, Grisham writes a page turner. I chewed up large chunks of this one in a relatively short amount of time. That said, this is not his usual legal thriller. Grisham seems to want to try and just write a thriller and, for the most part, it’s not that successful. There are long stretches of the novel where next to no action occurs and the plot doesn’t move foward. It reads almost like a travel guide to Bologna, Italy for large sections of the middle of the story as Joel learns about the culture and people. And the suspense sequences aren’t quite that suspenseful as there’s never any impending doom facing Joel as in other cloak and dagger type thrillers.

A good try, John, but not a successful one. You’ve branched out before with A Time to Kill and A Painted House, both of which are far better novels than this one.