The Client

If you only read one legal thriller by John Grisham, I strongly urge you to choose The Client. It's a remarkable book that will reward your patience, pique your curiosity, and keep you guessing until almost the very end.

The client has to be the most unusual legal thriller every written. The book's indomitable hero, Mark Sway, is an 11-year-old with a lot of guts and a desire to do the right thing. John Grisham takes that premise and pushes it to the limit by teaming Mark with the only lawyer that Grisham ever wrote positively about, Reggie Love. In the process, Grisham entertains with the petty foibles and vanities of the legal "powers that be" in a way that will make you wish that nice people worked at the law.

Enchanting books have heroes and heroines who intrigue and inspire us. Mark Sway and Reggie Love are well designed for those purposes. Mark is that wonderful combination of scamp, optimist, and idealist that Mark Twain first imagined in the character of Tom Sawyer. Reggie Love is a composite of the loving concern of everyone's favorite aunt combined with the toughness and smarts of Perry Mason.

The Mafia characters are bozos. The FBI agents are cretins. The prosecutors are sleaze balls. The other characters fade into the woodwork except for Reggie's favorite judge.

Have a ball!

THE CLIENT is one of my favorite books. It is superbly entertaining and immensely engrossing book that you aren't able to put down at all. Plus, it has constant emotional depth that leads to the unexpectedly tear-jerking ending.
I won't tell you about the plot, since you can get that elsewhere. I'm writing this so you will read this book.
Many of the complaints from other customers are about the fact that this book seems made to film. True, it does, but it's not anywhere near the point to where it lacks any depth. The characters are perfectly developed, and the dialouge is snappy and smart. Every part of the book is utterly thrilling and the entire 566 page book is a fast, enjoyable ride. Highly recommended.

This was one of the worst books I've ever read. Normally, I really like Grisham's works, but this was just terrible. The plot was very weak and the characters were unbelievable. The "bad guys" are FBI and attorneys trying to solve a murder. The "good guy" is an 11 year old boy, who won't talk about what he knows. The story is completely ridiculous and the boy's attorney makes everything overly complicated. The characters were just completely unbelievable. And he made the "bad guys" completely incompetent.

I wouldn't recommend this book to anyone.

The story is about a little boy who learns the location of a murder victims body, but refuses to tell the FBI the information.

Usually I like Grisham. He's an easy read, there's good suspense and the locations and characters are interesting. This one had some of the usual Grisham oddities: demonization of prosecuters and policeman, lionization of defense attorneys, seeming endorsement of illegal activities (obstruction, blackmail) by the hero and his lawyer.

This time in addition, there's strawman-like attempts to characterize the Republicant prosectur as a bad guy (he even says the guy doesn't sleep with his wife...little gratitious and below the belt) and to make the lawyer personally sympathetic (from her divorce, etc.) But the whole thing is so trite that it never even starts to work.

Add on to that, that the plot makes zero sense. Why does the kid rationally not reveal the information, why does he not give it anonymously, why the reluctance for WP and then the decision to enter it anyway?

I got so disengaged that I skimmed the last half of the book. Read THE FIRM instead.

If one was to go merely by the reviews online this book would have been overlooked. This book has everything a 'good book' should have. The book opens up with Mark, a 11 year old boy who is in the woods smoking with his younger brother, Rick. They see a black car pull up and watch in suspense as a man attempts to committ suicide. You have to get this book to find out the whole story. I loved it from the beginning to the end! I most definitely will be reading more books by him.

Highly recommend!