Dead Peasants: A Thriller
Jack Bryant is an übersuccessful lawyer who decides to retire after winning a huge wrongful-death case. Jack moves back home to Fort Worth, where he can spend more time with his college-football-playing son. But he’s really too young to be retired, so he sets up an old RV in a bad part of town, offering free legal help to whoever needs it, and stumbles upon one of the biggest cases in his career. June Davis, widow, accidentally discovers that her husband’s former employer had a very large life-insurance policy, a dead peasant policy, on her husband, which made the employer the beneficiary. A string of seemingly unrelated accidental deaths are paying off handsomely for the financially strapped business. There isn’t much to the mystery that most readers won’t figure out in a hurry, but legal-fiction fans will still appreciate the courtroom scenes. The pacing is fast, the characters well developed, and the lawyer is likable. Grisham aficionados should be delighted with Thompson. --Stacy Alesi