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Book Review of The King of Torts

The King of Torts
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At first glance at the summary of the back jacket of the novel âThe King of Tortsâ gives the implication that the novel would involve the main character defending his client against a famous and powerful company. However, upon reading it, this clearly isn't the case. Though Tequila Watson, the client, plays an important part of the outcome of Clay Carter, he only makes cameo appearances.

The story deals with Clay Carter, a defense lawyer whom is overworked and underpaid. Upon chance he was chosen for the case of Tequila Watson, whom is charged for murder. A case which he wish to avoid. As he digs in to the past of Tequila Watson, he found a unusual and interesting fact. That Tequila Watson, even though have several drugged and violence charges, had never have a violent act. It seems the murder happened at random. He encounter an colleague that has a similar case, murder without reason, except for this case, the accused has many violence charges. He began to feel something underneath of all.

Then he was contacted by a man by the name of Max Pace, he propose a opportunity to become rich. With one reason, that Clay drop the Tequila Watson's case and take the victims' case. Max Pace was hired by a large company that created a drug call Tarvan, a drug that can kill all addictions, smoke, crack and all other. It is tested in many countries in rehab centers and when brought into the U.S. Tequila Watson was among the first to take it. However, as marvel as the drug is, it has one issue. When it is stopped, the person would develop an urge to kill within the first ten days.

Realizing this, the company that made the drug was in frantic, if anyone were to find out, they would be ruined. Thus they hired Max Pace, a firefighter, to hire a lawyer to represent all the victims of the drug and have a settlement before it becomes big. And Clay was chosen.

When I read up to this point, I though Clay was going to refuse, defend Tequila's innocents and charge the company for the blame. But as I reconsider - and as Clay stated - no one in hell would fight this case. Clay didn't have the information nor the money to fight. So Clay sold his soul and makes a fortune.

As Clay's success grew and grew, I started to have a bad feeling of it, this is going way too smoothly and easy. Clay began to be control by his money; spend it so lavishly on useless items such as a jet plane and a villa. He had become one of those lawyers he saw in the hotel of Royal Sonesta in New Orleans. His righteousness is gone. Money is all he wanted and needed. Finally he was on top of the world, King of Torts, admired by all.

However, his fall also came swiftly as it his success. Suddenly the world was crashing down and there's no way to avoid it. As he saw the mess he had caused, the pain he put on his clients and companies and many other innocent people, he filed for bankruptcy and leave D.C. for good.

Although the novel was enjoyable, I felt quite disappointed by the lack of a central case. There are so many cases/problems in the novel that not one stands out as the main plot.