The Racketeer - John Grisham ★★

John Grisham is a popular author, with roughly 30+ books under his belt and a few which were made into movies. As of today, he is in the #14th spot for most popular artist on Goodreads.com. With that being said, I thought the Racketeer was going to be one that I couldn't put down.

The Racketeer is the story of Malcolm Banister, ex lawyer, now federal prison inmate #44861-127.  Malcolm is in prison for a crime he had no intentions of making and now he wants out. He gets his chance at freedom when a Judge gets murdered and Banister is the guy who knows what happened. Banister won't give the FBI the information they need, not without his own demands first.

While reading the first half of The Racketeer, I felt as though I was reading a history book. Grisham kept rattling off numbers and facts (not sure how factual they are) that related to the subject, I didn't think was a necessity. It seemed more like it was there for page fillers.  The premise of the story, is a decent subject although its been done before. Guy goes to jail, guy is innocent, guy gets released but gets his payback. The story was somewhat slow paced and then when it gets to the pivotal moment it then seems very rushed. Too rushed....and after all of Banisters "melodically" thinking when I reached the last few chapters it became predictable on what was going to happen and then gave this "Eh...could have been better" finally.

Read it if you like, but this isn't one that I would consider recommending.