Book Review: The Racketeer

I like to say, in a different lifetime, I’d love to be a lawyer, specifically, a defense attorney, and maybe better yet, working for the Innocence Project. I’m fascinated by the law and the machinations of how it operates in reality within the United States. Naturally, then, I’ve always been a fan of John Grisham’s legal thrillers, but it’s been a while since I’ve plowed through one. I picked up his 2012 book, The Racketeer, which is funny in hindsight because while it has legal maneuverings, it’s one of his least law-based and fact-based books I’ve read. Nonetheless, the book scratched my Grisham itch.

Malcolm Bannister, a small town lawyer, is in prison on a racketeering conviction, and he claims his innocence — that he didn’t know he was holding money for corrupt DC bigwig. Because of his five-year conviction at the hands of the federal government, Bannister has an axe to grind with the feds. He spends considerable time thinking about how screwed up the federal system is, both how easy it was to ruin his life, but also the way the prison system operates. In prison, he puts his lawyer talents to use helping other inmates with their convictions. This latter fact is important for later. Otherwise, he spends time thinking about how to get out of prison.

A federal judge is killed, along with his secretary, in Virginia, and the FBI has no physical evidence, no clues, and no suspects. The judge had something of worth in a secret basement safe. The feds are stuck until Bannister claims to know who the killer is, and if the feds get him out of jail, guarantee his safety, help him surgically change his appearance for said safety purposes, and give him the reward money leading to the indictment of the killer, then he’ll tell them the judge’s killer. Of course, the feds initially think he’s just another inmate trying to get a Rule 35 ruling to get himself out of prison. Bannister, though, has the goods pointing to a killer: Quintin Rucker.

The feds do to Rucker what happened to Bannister by pinning an indictment on someone who is innocent, this time through a false confession. The confession chapter, though, was riveting from Grisham. The way the two FBI interrogators wore down Rucker, lied to him, and convinced him to confess is straight from the textbook of how to guarantee a false confession.

From there, the book takes a turn into the whacky schemes territory. In short, Bannister was coordinating with Rucker the entire time. Rucker was someone he met in prison and I guess befriended, and they both heard about a corrupt judge with a lot of gold from a meth dealer who was also in prison. When the judge was killed, they knew it was this meth dealer and that the gold was the motive. So, Bannister fingers Rucker for the crime to get himself out of prison, and then with the reward money and new face, he has a two-fold mission and scheme: a.) trick the meth dealer into giving up where he hid the gold; and b.) pull the carpet out from under the feds he hates to get Rucker out of prison for the killing of the judge and to instead, let them know about the real killer, this meth dealer. In the end, Bannister, Rucker, Rucker’s brother, and Rucker’s sister (Vanessa, who helped Bannister in his scheme) leave the United States with all the gold.

I’m not sure it’s believable in the least that someone would be able to toy with the FBI and the Justice Department the way Bannister does, both in tricking them to release him from prison and go into the witness protection program where the real scheming begins, and then to get Rucker out of the indictment for the judge’s killing after they possess what they believe to be a real confession. I also don’t believe that an idiot meth dealer from Virginia would be able to torture and kill a judge and his secretary without leaving ample evidence of the crime.

All of that said, these books are like cotton candy, and you can’t think too much about how the cotton candy doesn’t make much sense for your overall health. You just enjoy it, and I did enjoy it! Mission achieved. And besides, Bannister’s missives about the federal government’s nonsensical prison system and the way it operates was spot on and speaking to this choir.