John Grisham
human nature. I have enjoyed reading many of his books. You can find
most of them at Barnes & Noble.
John Grisham is so successful at novel writing many of them have
become major motion pictures. Read them for the sheer joy of reading
and relaxation.
Aspiring Writers
The Pelican Brief
Published in March, 1991, The Firm was hailed by reviewers,
booksellers, and readers alike, and soon became the number one
bestseller across America. Now comes Grisham's equally gripping new
novel: an unforgettable story that begins with the simultaneous
assassinations of two Supreme Court justices. . . .
From the Publisher
In suburban Georgetown a killer's Reeboks whisper on the front floor
of a posh home... In a seedy D.C. porno house a patron is swiftly
garroted to death... The next day America learns that two of its
Supreme Court justices have been assassinated. And in New Orleans, a
young law student prepares a legal brief... To Darby Shaw it was no
more than a legal shot in the dark, a brilliant guess. To the Washington
establishment it was political dynamite. Suddenly Darby is witness to a
murder -- a murder intended for her. Going underground, she finds
there is only one person she can trust -- an ambitious reporter after a
newsbreak hotter than Watergate -- to help her piece together the
deadly puzzle. Somewhere between the bayous of Louisiana and the
White House's inner sanctums, a violent cover-up is being engineered.
For somone has read Darby's brief. Someone who will stop at nothing
to destroy the evidence of an unthinkable crime.
From The Critics
Publisher's Weekly
In this tale of the aftermath of the assassinations of two Supreme Court
justices, Grisham delivers a suspenseful plot at a breakneck pace,
although his characters are stereotypes. The hardcover was on the PW
bestseller list 48 weeks and the mass market was No. 1 last week.
(Mar.)
AudioFile - Matthew J. Costello
Grisham’s story of the murder of two disparate Supreme Court Justices
has a scope that could make abridgment difficult. Fortunately, all the
plot threads are in place here: the sexual trysts, the murder investigation,
and the political maneuverings which extend from the White House to
the cloistered halls of the Supreme Court itself. A story this big has to
be fun, and it is. While the reading seems tight at first, actor Anthony
Heald soon warms to the material. Or perhaps the breakneck pace of
the story takes over. The tapes are crisp and clear, and occasional
music accentuates the suspense adding to the fun. M.J.C. ©AudioFile,
Portland, Maine
Kirkus Reviews
Gripping legal suspenser by the author of last year's hallucinatory The
Firm—and an even stronger performance than that still-current
bestseller. Grisham also strikes gold with public awareness of the furor
over the Supreme Court nomination of Judge Thomas. Where The Firm
clamped into the reader's greed for the perks of a supersuccessful
young lawyer in an almost fantasy law firm, Grisham's second is a tale
that baits its own hooks with the lures of All the President's Men. That
much of what happens here happens regularly in suspense novels
(sudden stranglings and murders) in no way lessens the novel's intensity
and feeling of freshness—a freshness that springs in both novels from
Grisham's focus on top law students, cloistered brains who find
themselves raw beginners in the real world but afloat on cash. Here,
second-year law student at Tulane Darby Shaw sets out to solve the
seemingly motiveless simultaneous murders of two largely liberal
Supreme Court judges who were killed two hours apart on the same
night. A lone assassin or a conspiracy? Clearly someone wants the
conservative Republican president, a grandfatherly nerd mainly
interested in his golf game, to pack the already conservative Court.
Darby reviews hundreds of the Court's upcoming cases and sees only
one that fulfills the breadth of evil needed to account for such desperate
measures as double murder: a multibillion-dollar oil venture in Louisiana
that will kill off the state's beloved but endangered brown pelican.
Darby's brief on this "fictional" case finds its way to the White House,
the FBI, and the CIA. Then Darby's lover, her constitutional-law
professor, to whom she has shown the brief, is blown up in acar-bomb
explosion meant also to have killed Darby. The story's vitality springs
from Grisham's relentless enlivening of Darby's fears as she flees about
the country in a closing web of killers while trying to help Washington
Post reporter Gray Grantham get the goods on the baddies in a
newsbreak bigger than Watergate. Must entertainment for legal folk.
Should outsell The Firm. (Literary Guild Dual Selection for May)