The theme of a young lawyer being fed up with a giant law firm and bolting away to a less lucrative but more satisfying career is shared with The Associate.
The theme of a lawsuit against a giant corporation appeared in The Runaway Jury, but in the present book, the corporation is vindicated and proven to have been unjustly maligned (at least on the specific drug which is the subject of the lawsuit) and the mass tort lawyers are seen as greedy and unscrupulous, ultimately bolting and leaving the protagonist's tiny Chicago firm in the lurch.
Nonetheless, the book has achieved both hardcover and ebook #1 best seller status on various lists, including both The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal.
Having sold 250 million copies of his previous 24 novels in 29 languages, Grisham had produced an international bestseller with each prior book.
[2] In the second part of the interview the following week, Grisham noted that his inspirations for the book included television advertisements and the Deepwater Horizon oil spill.
David suddenly breaks away, goes on a drinking binge and by chance finds himself at the Finley & Figg office, where he willingly relegates himself to working for the two disreputable street lawyers.
Wally gets involved in a new scheme, finding claimants for a federal class action lawsuit against Krayoxx, a cholesterol-lowering drug developed by the fictional pharmaceutical company Varrick Labs.
However, complications that no one anticipated arise, including Varrick's hiring of Nadine Karros, Rogan Rothberg's ace litigator who never loses a case, and the growing evidence that there is nothing fundamentally wrong with Krayoxx.
Varrick pushes to have the case tried in the jurisdiction of Chicago federal judge Harry Seawright, with whom Rogan Rothberg has ties.
In a subsidiary plot, David Zinc stumbles on a lead poisoning brain damage case involving the child of Burmese immigrants.
[11] The Litigators is said to be "an amusing and appalling look into the machinations of a nationwide class-action suit," according to Tobin Harshaw of Bloomberg L.P.[4] The Wall Street Journal's Christopher John Farley noted that the book is lighter than Grisham's other works.
[13] Andrea Simakis of The Plain Dealer describes the book as a "heartier meal" than Grisham's usual "potato-chip fiction".
Carol Memmott of USA Today says that Grisham's latest attempt to capture the spirit of the legal David and Goliath story is missing "the ratcheting-up of suspense" that he has employed successfully in recent adult and youth novels.
Irish Independent describes Grisham's new book as "following his usual route to the bestsellers list" and projects it as a candidate to be his next Hollywood film.
[17] The Sunday Express noted that the book could be readily converted to a screenplay, but its critic, Robin Callender Smith, viewed the "ambulance chasing" ethos as a foreign thing that Brits might have to worry about in the near future.
[29] The Wall Street Journal announced that on Saturday October 29, it would begin incorporating digital book sales in its best seller lists.
[38] It debuted at #1 on the New York Times Paperback Mass-Market Fiction Best Sellers list on July 15, 2012 (reflecting sales for the week ending June 30, 2012).