Mystery/Thriller Reading Friends discussion

Chapters 6-10 The first people posting please provide a synopsis of these chapters.

6.
Herschel fires Lettie. Says he will be locking up the house. Lettie realizes she is short of funds with a drunk husband who is more a liability than anything else. At the funeral, she realizes she is the only one crying.
Jake contacts the executor and sets up a meeting for the next day. Jake files the will, making it public record. The fun is about to begin.
He visits Lettie so they can begin to talk about what is to come, and he tells her that a large portion of the estate is going to her.

7.
Jake tells his wife he has a live one.

8.
He then meets with the executor who fills him in on the financial dealings of Seth. The estate is looking like about $20 million. Big money for the rural South. They note that allowing 50% losses to estate taxes might not be considered sound thinking. Jake noted that nobody was considering Seth as the richest person in the community.

9.
Lettie shows up for her last day of work, and gets ordered around by the snarky family. The object to her face at her pay rate and make it clear that they are changing the locks. The kids meet with the lawyers for the original will, and try to hide it from Lettie, but she eavesdrops. The kids are already counting the money.

10.
The old lawyerrs learn that the will they petition to probate has already been submitted by Jake. They meet with Jake and set ground rules for going forward. One must remember, all of the lawyers, eve our “good guy” see this as money to be made.
Lucien:disbarred lawyer who wons Jake’s office and is eligible to be reinstated. Jake discusses the merits of bringing it before Judge Atlee or keeping it out of the courts. Jake says the case is about money. Lucien says every case in Mississippi is about race.

All I kept thinking about was how The family was going to get their's. Already I don't like seth's family. I'm visualizing Matthew as Jake having gone back and watched the trailer from the first money. This book is going to be good. I hope to get the next section of chapters in.

Donnajo wrote: "All I kept thinking about was how The family was going to get their's. Already I don't like seth's family. I'm visualizing Matthew as Jake having gone back and watched the trailer from the first ..."

i pictured matthew as jake, too, dj, when i read the book.

Grisham does seem to like his characters to be fully black or white. Not much nuance.

Barry wrote: "Grisham does seem to like his characters to be fully black or white. Not much nuance."

It's true. Or, fully good, or (looking forward to the next chapters) fully bad.

Still, Grisham knows how to line 'em up to make a good battle. I can't wait until it gets going.

I am SO looking forward to watching the family get told the truth about the will. How dare they change the locks on Lettie, as if she's going to come back after they're gone and strip the house clean? If she wanted to do that she could have done before they got there and they wouldn't have been the wiser.

It took me a minute to figure out what Matthew you were talking about! I completely forgot he played Jake in the movie. I'm now thinking of him as the Lincoln Lawyer, LOL.

Donnajo wrote: "All I kept thinking about was how The family was going to get their's. Already I don't like seth's family. I'm visualizing Matthew as Jake having gone back and watched the trailer from the first ..."

Lettie, of course, is good. Grisham gives you little to no reason to like most of Seth's family.

Since Seth was very vindictive to his two ex-wives and unhappy at the estrangement of his kids, I would argue that he is of very sound mind and deliberately "giving them the finger" while allowing 50% taxes to eat away at that portion of the money they would certainly think is rightly theirs. I think he did it all on purpose, set up the other law firm drawn will with them as beneficiaries, then having Jake pull the rug out from under them with the new holographic will. The timing of the new will is the only thing that seems like it would have been a lot left to chance if that was the case.
But the Executor mentions how much risk Seth was happy to take - he seems like the kind of guy that would play hardball with the heirs he would disinherit. Look at his asking for the executor specifically and not leaving him anything at all.

I totally agree with the good vs evil characters and the black vs white. No blurred lines here!

I'm not so sure that they are good or evil. With the exception of Lettie (and Jake) none of them are too good, but not all bad--or maybe have reasons to be bad. Seth was a bad husband and father and a vindictive man, but yet he was good enough to reward Lettie. The kids are losers, but apparently they had a bad childhood. People are complex and Grisham does a good job of illustrating that point.

Good points, Cathy.

Cathy wrote: "I'm not so sure that they are good or evil. With the exception of Lettie (and Jake) none of them are too good, but not all bad--or maybe have reasons to be bad. Seth was a bad husband and father an..."

Seth seemed like a gambler with all his risky investments and company takeovers. These two wills is the biggest gamble of all.

But the question I keep asking myself is about the lawyers. Grisham has made it quite clear that Seth hated and distrusted lawyers. If Seth was a totally clear mind, (which I'm still unsure as a reader) wouldn't he have wanted it to be competently lawyer free? He is clearly the only one who knew the extent of estate in terms of net-worth. He could have easily predicted that all types of latcher-oners would be coming out of the wood work armed with their own set lawyers. It doesn't make sense to me. However I'm only on chapter 17, so please no spoilers if anyone choose to respond.

Ryan: Perhaps Seth was "sticking it" to the lawyers too, at least the ones at the big firm. It certainly seemed he had intent, sound or not, to disinherit his family.
Ryan wrote: "But the question I keep asking myself is about the lawyers. Grisham has made it quite clear that Seth hated and distrusted lawyers. If Seth was a totally clear mind, (which I'm still unsure as a reader) wouldn't he have wanted it to be competently lawyer free? He is clearly the only one who knew the extent of estate in terms of net-worth. "