The Client (Paperback)

by John Grisham (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com 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 Publishers 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.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 566 pages
• Publisher: Dell Publishing Company, Inc. (May 1, 1996)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0440213525
• ISBN-13: 978-0440213529
• Product Dimensions: 6.8 x 3.9 x 1.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 9.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (321 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #419,166 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

11 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Readable, entertaining boiler-plate legal "thriller", January 23, 2000

By A Customer

John Grisham's books are perfect for reading on extended airplane trips or in other situations where all one desires is a readable "page-turner" to help while away the hours. The particular novel is formulaic from start to finish, complete with shallow, stereotyped characters (including a boy protagonist who apparently is eleven going on thirty in terms of his outlook and behavior). The "bad guys" are unrelentingly bad, while the "good guys" are practically saints. Perfect, eh?

Grisham is a master of the "easy read," and the book is excellent in terms of its basic function, which is to entertain. Great literature it isn't, however, so don't begin this novel with unrealistic expectations in this regard.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Wonderous , March 7, 2006

By	Kayla Bianco - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Client (Paperback)

John Grisham's, The Client was extremely thrilling and kept me on the edge of my seat. It was suspenseful and humorous several times throughout the book. I enjoyed it all the way through, it kept asking so many questions to where I had to keep reading. I could barely even put it down. John Grisham put so much emotion into the book I could almost feel the characters feelings. Grisham illustrates in such a way I admired it from the beginning. I recommend this book to anyone who likes books about lawyers and to anyone who likes suspenseful and emotional books. This book was an easy read and I hope you enjoy it.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars The Client, December 1, 2006

By	J. Weaver (San Diego) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

I hated this book. I'm not one to write a review, but I felt a desperate need to write one for this book. By the end I hated the kid, I hated the lawyer, and I hated the Juvenile judge. Why didn't the kid just tell what he knew at the beginning of the book? Because then you have no story and you can't fill up over 400 pages. The bad guys turned out to be law enforcement people who were only trying to solve a mafia murder. It didn't make sense. The only redeeming feature was I got the book for free. Anything above that would have been too much to pay.