He’s also a loan shark, with dirty dealing going on at firms including Quinn & Vyrdoliac and Sorvann Lenders. Hinds Rackley is the billionaire who owns the school, and others like it, through shell companies with names like Varanda Capital, Baytrium Group and Lacker Street Trust.

Yes, Foggy Bottom is a real neighborhood in Washington, D.C., but it’s also the perfect name for a school this dismal. Grisham demonstrates a Dickensian flair for evocative names. Halfway through their final year at school, they have wised up to the only real attainment Foggy Bottom has earned them: A mountain of debt.

Foggy Bottom Law School advertises the ease with which its happy graduates land high-paying jobs at prestigious firms, but this book’s three main characters - Mark, Todd and Zola - are not happy. He begins by describing the sleaziest for-profit law school he can imagine. Goliath situation and take it from there. But how do you translate the ethical and economic issues raised by Campos into the high drama of a swift legal thriller? If you’re Grisham, you postulate a David v. This novel was prompted by an illuminating essay that condemned student-entrapping practices: “The Law-School Scam,” by Paul Campos, which ran in The Atlantic in 2014. But it’s a long leap from subject matter to story, and Grisham’s newly reanimated storytelling skills are what make “The Rooster Bar” such a treat. Earlier this year, John Grisham announced that his next legal thriller would be about the scams behind many for-profit law schools.

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