Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

AN INNOCENT CLIENT is an impressive legal thriller debut. If you enjoy the work of John Grisham, you might like this one too, since it's written in a similar style. This novel takes place in rural Tennessee, and stars Joe Dillard, a burnt out criminal defense lawyer who hopes to represent at least one innocent client before he retires. When the novel opens, he is seemingly handed such a client, an 18-year old waitress at a strip club who is accused of murdering a fundamentalist preacher. AN INNOCENT CLIENT has a lot of good qualities. Author Pratt, an ex-attorney himself, does a superb job with all the courtroom scenes. The prose in this book is quite polished (truly exceptional for a first effort), and the main character is easy to root for. Pratt also does a good job structuring the plot, which sustained my interest until the very end. If this novel has a downside, I would say it's the rather superficial characterization. Like John Grisham, author Pratt tends to see things in black-and-white, moralistic terms. As a result, most of the supporting characters in this novel are little more than colorful caricatures of one sort or another. The villains in particular are outrageously corrupt and evil, which makes the story more corny than realistic in many spots. Overall, though, AN INNOCENT CLIENT is an entertaining debut, and Grisham fans should definitely give it a try. This is apparently the first in a series, and I look forward to future installments.