The Client - Softcover

John Grisham

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0440213525 ISBN 13: 9780440213529

Publisher: Dell Publishing, 1996

Synopsis

In a weedy lot on the outskirts of memphis, two  boys watch a shiny Lincoln pull upt ot 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.

About this title

Review:

Mark Sway, age 11 but years wiser thanks to a drunken dad who abused his mom, is out in the woods behind his Memphis trailer park teaching his kid brother, Ricky, how to smoke Virginia Slims heisted from Mom's purse. He's a pretty upright kid--he's determined to protect his brother from drugs, and he once defended his mom with a baseball bat.

The dangers of smoking rapidly escalate when Mark glimpses a guy trying to commit suicide by carbon monoxide in his car nearby and tries to stop him. The guy is Jerome, a lawyer who tells Mark that his Mafia client has murdered Senator Boyd Boyette and buried him in the concrete under his garage in New Orleans. Then Jerome puts a bullet in his own head. Little Ricky flips out, and so does Barry the Blade Muldanno, who doesn't want blustery U.S. attorney Reverend Roy Foltrigg to find the corpse and bust him. Caught in a ruthless game between the Mob and the amoral authorities, Mark's family has no defense in the world except Reggie Love, a 50ish divorcée who has just turned her life around by becoming a lawyer. Does she have what it takes to help Mark beat the system? The life-or-death chase is on!

Mark has seen a lot of movies, and he sees life in cinematic terms. So does Grisham. Even if this novel had never been filmed, it would still be a really good, fast-paced movie. Its literary limitation is also its filmlike virtue: The Client is a rush.

From the Back Cover:

"Engrossing!" -- San Francisco Chronicle.

"Absorbing... Wildly original... His best book yet." --Cosmopolitan.

"Heart -pounding!" -- The Orlando Sentinel.

"Grisham is an absolute master!" --The Washington Post.

About this edition

• Publisher: Dell Publishing
• Publication date: 1996
• ISBN 10: 0440213525
• ISBN 13: 9780440213529
• Binding: Mass Market Paperback
• Number of pages: 566