The King of Torts

It had been a long time since I'd read a John Grisham book, saw this laying around and knocked it out in a couple of days.
Published in 2003 by Dell the paperback version has 470 pages.
The story is about a public defender in Washington DC, in the preparation for the defense of a client catches a whiff of obstruction and in chasing that he triggers the interest of a pharmaceutical company fixer. Clay Carter, the public defender, the son of a prominent disbarred lawyer, is scraping by on a lousy salary, becoming numb to guilty clients, has a girlfriend pressuring for marriage and a better life.  The girlfriend leaves him for a good earner and an offer comes from an unknown pharmaceutical company via a shady fixer, millions of dollars to pay off victims of criminal that have killed due to negative side affects of a promising drug.  Clay jumps the public defenders office and takes the deal and solves the offers to settle quickly.  Soon the fixer presents another offer from a different pharmaceutical company, to bring a class action suit against a competitor for benign tumors side effects of a popular arthritis medicine. Clay plays the short stock game knowing what is going to happen. The results are swift and dramatic, Clay's new firm earns over $100,000,000.00, with which he is generous to his subordinate partners.
Soon more class action torts are developed.
Well, as the fires are burning red hot the benign tumors started turning cancerous and a class action suit is filed against the star lawyer. The new cases fall through for various reason and the end results is a lot of pissed off clients and the SEC knocking at he door. A pair of the victims beat the tar out of him, all of is property is sold off, he stays out of SEC jail, gets the girl back and runs off to hide where he can be invisible.
If you like Grisham give it a whirl, The King of Torts is a fun fast read.
That said if you haven't read Grisham, I suggest you start with some of the better offers like A Time to Kill.  The plot is simple and I found myself thinking about three chapters ahead after about the first hundred pages.