John Grisham is the biggest-selling author of legal thrillers not only because he comes up with exciting and enthralling plots but also because his writing is literate and utterly compelling.

His latest book is not about a trial that has already been won but about the appeal to the Mississippi Supreme Court by an unscrupulous pharmaceutical company (which poisoned a town's water supply with carcinogens) reluctant to pay the $41m punitive damages awarded by the jury.

And how best to ensure that the case is reversed on appeal? Why, simply by ensuring that a wildly conservative judge is elected to the court to swing the decision in their favour. But there is no predictable simplicity in this plot, and the reader is taken on a bumpy ride into uncharted territory and to a surprising, nail-biting conclusion.

The subtext is an indictment of the way money can be used in the election of American judges, thereby undermining their impartiality.