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The Client

Name: The Client
Author: John Grisham
ISBN: 9780345531926

by John Grisham

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Overview

In a weedy lot on the outskirts of memphis, two boys watch a shiny Lincoln pull up to the curb... Eleven-year-old Mark Sway and his younger brother were sharing a forbidden cigarrette when a chance encounter with a suicidal laywer left Mark knowing a bloody and explosive secret: the whereabouts of the most sought-after dead body in America. Now Mark is caught between a legal system gone mad and a mob killer desperate to cover up his crime. And his only ally is a woman named Reggie Love, who has been a lawyer for all of four years. Prosecutors are willing to break all the rules to make Mark talk. The mob will stop at nothing to keep him quiet. And Reggie will do anything to protect her client -- even take a last, desperate gamble that could win Mark his freedom... or cost them both their lives.

The Firm catapulted Grisham into the ranks of this country's most popular authors, spending 47 weeks on the New York Times hardcover bestseller list and 18 weeks as number one in paperback. Now Grisham has crafted another gripping tale of legal intrigue. A young boy is inadvertantly present at the bizarre suicide of a New Orleans defense attorney on the eve of the biggest trial of his career.

About the Author, John Grisham

John Grisham lives with his family in Virginia and Mississippi. His previous novels are A Time to Kill, The Firm, The Pelican Brief, The Client, The Chamber, The Rainmaker, The Runaway Jury, and The Partner.

Biography

As a young boy in Arkansas, John Grisham dreamed of being a baseball player. Fortunately for his millions of fans, that career didn't pan out. His family moved to Mississippi in 1967, where Grisham eventually received a law degree from Ole Miss and established a practice in Southaven for criminal and civil law. In 1983, Grisham was elected to the Mississippi House of Representatives, where he served until 1990.

While working as an attorney, Grisham witnessed emotional testimony from the case of a young girl's rape. Naturally inquisitive, Grisham's mind started to wander: what if the terrible crime yielded an equally terrible revenge? These questions of right and wrong were the subject of his first novel, A Time to Kill (1988), written in the stolen moments before and between court appearances. The book wasn't widely distributed, but his next title would be the one to bring him to the national spotlight. The day after he finished A Time to Kill, Grisham began work on The Firm (1991), the story of a whiz kid attorney who joins a crooked law firm. The book was an instant hit, spent 47 weeks on The New York Times bestseller list, and was made into a movie starring Tom Cruise.

With the success of The Firm, Grisham resigned from the Mississippi House of Representatives to focus exclusively on his writing. What followed was a string of bestselling legal thrillers that demonstrated the author's uncanny ability to capture the unique drama of the courtroom. Several of his novels were turned into blockbuster movies.

In 1996, Grisham returned to his law practice for one last case, honoring a promise he had made before his retirement. He represented the family of a railroad worker who was killed on the job, the case went to trial, and Grisham won the largest verdict of his career when the family was awarded more than $650,000.

Although he is best known for his legal thrillers, Grisham has ventured outside the genre with several well-received novels (A Painted House, Bleachers, et al) and an earnest and compelling nonfiction account of small-town justice gone terribly wrong (The Innocent Man). The popularity of these stand-alones proves that Grisham is no mere one-trick pony but a gifted writer with real "legs."

Good To Know

A prolific writer, it takes Grisham an average of six months to complete a novel.

Grisham has the right to approve or reject whoever is cast in movies based on his books. He has even written two screenplays himself: Mickey and The Gingerbread Man.

Baseball is one of Grisham's great loves. He serves as the local Little League commissioner and has six baseball diamonds on his property, where he hosts games.

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Editorials

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

Fans of the bestselling Grisham will be pleased to note that he is once more on Firm ground: his latest legal thriller offers a clever, compelling plot coupled with two singular protagonists sure to elicit readers' empathy. Eleven-year-old Mark Sway, taking his kid brother for a smoke behind their Memphis trailer park, witnesses the suicide of a lawyer ``driven crazy'' by a lethal secret. Before he dies, the man confides to Mark where the body of a recently murdered U.S. senator lies buried, and the game's afoot. Trailed by the police, the FBI and assorted Mafia types the deceased politico was the victim of ``a successful New Orleans street thug'', Mark retains--for one dollar--the services of Reggie Love, a 50ish female lawyer. This uncommon attorney-client relationship adds an affecting, unusually humanistic layer to the novel's tension-filled events. Mark, raised by a divorced mother and wise beyond his years, thinks chiefly in terms of movies and TV; Reggie, a street-smart survivor of an acrimonious divorce, is often unsure whether to hug or slug her precocious client. True to form, Grisham employs just enough foreshadowing to keep the suspense rolling ``Neither of them could know that . . . '', and propels his action at the requisite breakneck pace. Occasional plot improbabilities and stylistic quibbles--a few fuzzy characterizations; overstatement of already obvious points; Mark's sporadic adult phraseology--will not deter readers from enjoying a rousing read. 950,000 first printing; Literary Guild and Doubleday Book Club main selections; Reader's Digest Condensed Book selection. Mar.

School Library Journal

YA-- While sneaking into the woods to smoke forbidden cigarettes, preteen brothers Mark and Ricky find a lawyer committing suicide in his car. Mark tries to save the man but is instead grabbed by him and told the location of the body of a murdered U. S. senator--a murder of which the lawyer's Mafia-connected client is accused. Witnessing the successful suicide sends Ricky into shock and Mark into a web of lies, half-truths, and finally into refusal to tell the confided secret to the police. Mark accidentally but fortuitously hires a lawyer, Reggie Love, who steers him through a maze of FBI agents, legal proceedings, judges, ambitious lawyers, and hit men. Love's 11-year-old, street-smart client defies the judicial system to protect himself and his family. This thriller is unique in its theme and in its suspense mixed with humor. A sure ``all-night'' read.-- Katherine Fitch, Lake Braddock Secondary School, Burke, VA

Ray Olson

The newest member of the sure-fire-number-one-bestseller club is going to score big again. For the author of "The Firm" and "The Pelican Brief" here merges two tried-and-true genres--the legal thriller and the boys' adventure yarn. His hero is 11-year-old Mark Sway, who, with his 8-year-old brother, witnesses a Mafia-defending shyster's suicide, unfortunately not before he's learned why the creep's offing himself--a secret that one Barry the Blade in particular is not going to let the lawyer live with. Now that Mark knows it, he's in danger, too, and not only from the bad guys. A politically ambitious U.S. attorney (one of that new breed of villain, the Reagan appointee) is hot on Barry's case, and he'll pull any string, ruin any life, to get ahead. So the cops and the FBI start coming down hard on Mark. But Mark's a bright, resourceful kid, and he finds an attorney, Reggie Love, a former society matron who survived a horrible divorce, went to law school, and became a specialist in defending children. Together they make a sterling team, although, really, this is Mark's book and one helluva good read, not to mention the movie possibilities. If Macaulay ("Home Alone") Culkin can stave off a growth spurt and a voice change long enough, here's his chance to make it as a "serious" actor.

Kirkus Reviews

Grisham's latest opens with a neat hook into the reader's jaw—and the tension never wavers—as the author strives for a knockout suspenser with echoes of Mark Twain and Robert Louis Stevenson—or at least the reader can't help weighing what he's reading against the darker plots that enmesh Huck Finn and Jim Hawkins. Instead of pirates, though, 11-year-old Mark Sway is thrown among lawyers and murderers. Mark, a great follower of L.A. Law, becomes "the client" after he witnesses the suicide of a drunken Mafia lawyer. Before the lawyer dies, he tries to take Mark with him, holding the boy prisoner while the Cadillac they sit in fills with carbon dioxide. As he's fading, the lawyer reveals to Mark the whereabouts of the body of a Louisiana senator. The senator was murdered by Mafia thug Barry "the Blade" Muldanno, then buried under concrete in the lawyer's garage. Mark escapes death but now holds a secret so deadly that Barry the Blade is ready to waste him. He's also wanted by the feds because Barry's going on trial for the senator's murder—but there's no body, and so the feds have a weak case. Mark retains 52-year-old Reggie Love, an abused divorc‚e, to help him keep shut about the body's whereabouts. If it's known that he knows—and the hoods and feds suspect him mightily—he and his family will never have a safe moment again. The story is set in Memphis, then moves to New Orleans, but both backgrounds are sketchy. The strongest scene features three mildly funny goons in the middle of the night trying to...well, enough. Mark is too smart by half, rather than wise like Huck; dialogue slips into exposition; and Grisham goes for the tear ducts at tale's end, butpresses too hard. None of this matters. In the movie, the obligatory face-out between Barry the Blade and Mark will take place, bet on it, though Grisham avoids the confrontation. (Literary Guild Dual Selection for May)