About the Author : JOHN GRISHAM
John Ray Grisham, formerly a Criminal Defense Attorney is a graduate of Mississippi State University and Ole Miss Law School, he has also served two terms in the Mississippi House of representatives. His novels include A Time to Kill, The Client, The Appeal, The Associate – 17 fiction novels in all, most of them Legal fictions.
Many of his books have been made into successful films. He lives with his wife and two children on a farm near Oxford, where he generally works on a new novel. The Firm was John Grisham’s second novel. It is fast faced and keeps the readers hooked from the creepy first chapter to the vise tightening mid sections and on to the Take the money and run Finale.
The Story :
The Firm is a 1991 legal thriller by American writer John Grisham. It was his second book and the first which gained wide popularity in 1993, after selling 1.5 million copies; it was made into a namesake film starring Tom Cruise, Gene Hackman and Jeanne Tripplehorn. Grisham’s first novel, A Time to Kill, came into prominence afterwards due to this novel’s success.
The Firm is the story of Mitch McDeere, a brilliant lawyer, and the firm which made him an offer he should have refused. Mitch McDeere was at the top of his class at Harvard law and he had his choice of the best jobs in America. He was in great demand, and he gets a job offer from a relatively small law firm called Bendini Lambert & Locke of Memphis, built by an aggressive tax lawyer named Anthony Bendini. Memphis was the last place Mitch and his wife Abigail wanted to be in, but, that was until he decided to go for an interview with the Managing Partners of the Firm; and then he began to change his opinions about the firm. He seriously thought that joining the firm would be the best thing for him and his beautiful wife Abby. The Firm leased him a BMW car, and paid off his study loans, they even arranged a mortgage for his new home and hired a decorator. But Mitch and Abby began to develop uneasy feelings about the whole affair. There were early indications that the firm was going to take over their lives.
They kept remembering Mitch’s brother Ray’s words (Ray was doing fifteen years in a Tennessee jail) – ‘You never get nothing for nothing’. Even as days pass with Mitch working for 20 hours a day and hardly spending time with Abby unease grew. When Wayne Tarranne, special agent, FBI, spoke to Mitch and warned him about the firm and told him that there were suspicions about the recent deaths of two of the firm’s employees, Mitch begins to do some re thinking. Mitch is caught in a whirlpool and in more trouble from all sides when he begins to do some investigations of his own. He realizes that he is caught between unknown fears with no choice and that both his and Abby’s lives were in danger. Now they both had to use up all their mental resources to stay one step ahead and more importantly stay alive!
My Views about ‘The Firm’ :
Grisham’s gripping fiction debut describes the inner workings of a law firm set up by the Mafia to launder money and concoct tax evasions. Mitchell McDeere, third in his class at Harvard Law, is wooed relentlessly by the prestigious Memphis tax firm of Bendini, Lambert and Locke. Succumbing to the firm’s high-powered salesmanship, he rejects some of the country’s best-known firms to join the group, where he is awed by the opulent lifestyle pressed upon him. But the company has ruthless, underhanded methods of gathering information (they wire the homes of all associates) and ensuring loyalty (social situations are severely monitored). The firm’s mania for security and secrecy, combined with the fact that the only lawyers who have ever left did so in coffins–five in 15 years–arouse Mitch and wife Abby’s curiosity, and they rapidly find themselves in a labyrinth of intrigue and danger. Grisham, a criminal defense attorney, lucidly describes law office procedures at the highest levels, smoothly meshing them with the criminal events of the narrative. Mitch and Abby are appealing characters, though a suspension of disbelief may be required to accept their super-cool behavior while they are on the run from both the FBI and the Mafia. Nonetheless, readers will be totally hooked by this unusual and absorbing story.
This story was a sizzler right from the opening pages, even as Mitch is about to be interviewed and the Managing partners are sizing him up in their chambers, one can get the tingling sensation. This carries through as the interview progresses and they hook him with their irresistible offers.
As I read, I could feel Mitch’s growing uneasiness which he fails to express to his wife Abby, whereas she is herself feeling the same. But they both ignore these warnings and Mitch goes ahead and joins The Firm.
Grisham’s style of writing is unique, different. He keeps the readers totally hooked but it is not the fast paced heady action that one gets used to in Ludlum’s or Foresythe’s books. However the story as it unfolds keeps you interested throughout. The suspense is very well kept, just when I thought that I had it all figured out, I realized that I was wrong. It is a clever way of misleading the readers which only makes one all the more curious about the plot. After a while, even after you come to know exactly what the story is and the suspense is, you are still as interested to know how it is going to end.
The best part about reading these suspense thrillers is the Geographical knowledge that you gain. You get to read about some really exotic places that one may never have heard of. I make it a point to look up these places on the net and in most cases I find the information given is authentic. In this novel I learnt about yet another place called Cayman Islands consisting of 3 islands – Grand Cayman, Little Cayman and Cayman Brac and the capital city is George Town. A lot of action in the novel takes place in this place and in fact it is the focal point for the story.
About the author –
This novel review is written by Raktim Sarma, 1st Year of LL.B. at NEF Law College (affiliated to Gauhati University).
