Grisham clever with caper that’s all too real

John Grisham’s latest novel, “The Rooster Bar,” was inspired by “The Law School Scam,” a 2014 investigative article in The Atlantic.

Grisham’s tale is a thoroughly engaging, seriocomic caper that satirizes and exposes unsavory for-profit law schools, the banks that exploit students with loans they’ll never be able to repay, unfair U.S. immigration policies and, basically, the entire U.S. legal profession.

“The Rooster Bar” centers on Mark Frazier, Todd Lucero and Zola Maal, third-year law students in Washington, D.C., enrolled in Foggy Bottom Law School, a bottom-of-the-line, forprofit institution.

The job market is dismal, even if the trio does manage to pass the bar exam after graduation — which isn’t likely because the passing rate for Foggy Bottom graduates is a pathetic 56 percent.

Each of the three is drowning in student debt, which each will surely struggle mightily to pay off. Their law school had enticed them to take out huge federally backed loans — from an equally disreputable bank offering easy money withthe false prospect that they would find high-paying jobs right after graduating and passing the bar.

By the start of their final semester, they realize that their job prospects are bleak.

Zola is a black MuslimAmerican woman of Senegalese descent, born in the United States and, thus, a citizen. But her parents and

younger brother are in the country illegally and vulnerable to raids by the Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

Zola is involved with a handsome, athletic WASP law student, Gordon (“Gordy”) Tanner, who happens to be bipolar. He also happens to be engaged to a wealthy white girl from his hometown.

In one of his manic moments, Gordy exhibits to Zola and her friends an expose of billionaire investment crook Hinds Rackley, who owns and controls — off the books — the law school as well as the loan-providing banks.

Gordy leaves his apartment in a drunken stupor and is arrested for DUI. When Mark and Todd go to court to pay his bail, they encounter Darrell Cromley, a lawyer soliciting vulnerable defendants with promises of helping them avoid jail time. No one questions the credentials of Cromley or the other lawyers there.

The next day, Gordy kills himself by jumping off the Arlington Memorial Bridge. To honor Gordy in his attempt to expose Rackley — and to get themselves out of debt — Mark, Todd and Zola team to invent new identities and a nonexistent law firm of their own. According to some studies, Unauthorized Practice of Law is a felony but is typically treated lightly.

Such is the setup for Grisham’s wild, hardto-put-down romp. The author’s writing is brilliant; his far-fetched plot, compelling from chapter to chapter. The story appears light and funny, but his characters’ travails reflect those of a significant number of real-life American millennials duped by unscrupulous banks and businesses.

Add to this the somber depiction of the travails encountered by earnest immigrants facing deportation, and the author’s comedic pen turns darker.

The brief scenes in which Zola’s relatives languish in a detention facility are harrowing, as is the abuse they’re subjected to in Senegal.

The adventures of Zola and her American cohorts alleviate the horror, though, when the Americans travel to Africa to rescue the deportees.