The Appeal

AUTHOR'S NOTE

I am compelled to defend my native state, and do so with this flurry of disclaimers.

All characters herein are purely fictional. Any similarity to a real person is coincidental.

There is no Cary County, no town of Bow-more, no Krane Chemical, and no product such as pillamar 5. Bi-chloronylene, aklar, and cartolyx do not exist, as far as I know.

The Mississippi Supreme Court has nine elected members, none of whom were used as models or inspiration for anyone mentioned or described in the preceding pages. None of the organizations, associations, groups, nonprofits, think tanks, churches, casinos, or corporations are real. I just made them up. Some of the towns and cities can be found on a map, others cannot. The campaign is a figment of my imagination. The lawsuit is borrowed from several actual cases. A few of the buildings really do exist, but I'm not altogether sure which ones.

In another life, I served as a member of the Mississippi House of Representatives, and in that capacity had a role in making laws. In this book, some of those laws have been amended, modified, ignored, and even outright butchered. Writing fiction sometimes requires this.

A few of the laws, especially those dealing with casino gambling, * survive without tampering on my part.

Now that I have impugned my own work, I must say that there is a lot of truth in this story. As long as private money is allowed in judicial elections we will see competing interests fight for seats on the bench. The issues are fairly common. Most of the warring factions are adequately described. The tactics are all too familiar.

The results are not far off the mark.

As always, I leaned on others for advice and expertise. Thanks to Mark Lee, Jim Craig, Neal Kassell, Bobby Moak, David Gernert, Mike Ratliff, Ty, Bert Colley and John Sherman.

Stephen Rubin published this book, Doubleday's twentieth, and the gang there-John Fontana, Rebecca Holland, John Pitts, Kathy Trager, Alison Rich, and Suzanne Herz-again made it happen.

And thanks to Renee for her usual patience and abundance of editorial comments.

John Grisham October 1,2007