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The Pelican Brief by John Grisham β€” book cover

The Pelican Brief

by John Grisham
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Overview

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 β€” a murder  intended for her. Going underground, she finds  there is only one person she can trust β€” an  ambitious reporter after a newsbreak hotter than Watergate  β€” 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.

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. . . .

Synopsis

In suburban Georgetown, a killer’s Reeboks whisper on the 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’s political dynamite. Suddenly Darby is witness to a murder–a murder intended for her. Going underground, she finds that there is only one person–an ambitious reporter after a newsbreak hotter than Watergate–she can trust 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 someone has read Darby’s brief–someone who will stop at nothing to destroy the evidence of an unthinkable crime.

Publishers 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.)

About the Author, John Grisham

The master of the legal thriller, John Grisham was a criminal and civil lawyer in Mississippi when his first book, A Time to Kill, was published. But it was his next book, The Firm, that became a blockbuster and established him as king of the genre.

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Editorials

Publishers Weekly - 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.

Kirkus Reviews

Gripping legal suspenser by the author of last year's hallucinatory The Firmβ€”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 freshnessβ€”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)

Book Details

Published
January 1, 2010
Publisher
Random House Publishing Group
Pages
496
Format
Mass Market Paperback
ISBN
9780440245933

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