The Judge’s List is a book by John Grisham is a story about Lacy Stoltz, who is an investigator for the Florida Board of Judicial Conduct (BJC). The BJC is obligated by law to investigate complaints against judges and Lacy gets a complaint from a woman named Jeri Crosby who claims her father was murdered by Judge Ross Bannick. Jeri has been searching for the person who killed her father for many years and makes a complaint with the BJC because there is not enough evidence to convenience the police or FBI. However, there is a lot of circumstantial evidence that the judge may have been involved in several other murders. The BJC gets lots of complaints that are filed by people unhappy with a judicial decision or who are crackpots and by all accounts, Judge Bannick is an upstanding judge with a good reputation, so if he is a serial killer then he is very good at covering his tracks. This begins a cat and mouse game as Lacy and her team try to find evidence without tipping the the judge off.
This was a fun book with plenty of suspense. You got to know the main character, Lacy, as she navigated her work and personal life. In terms of the law the book seemed very well researched. However, without revealing too much, there is a computer genius in the story who with a little waving of hands plays a big role in the story. I’m getting tired of books, TV shows, and movies that bring out a computer wizard who breaks into computers and magically does something to make the story work. It is unrealistic. Otherwise the story was enjoyable.
The main character, Lacy Stoltz, was also in an earlier book, The Whistler, but this story stands on its own. I listened to the audio version of The Judge’s List and the reader did a good job in telling the story.