John Grisham Books

I love this book, and have dubbed it "my favorite"- however, I do have a lot more Grisham to read. But, it still is an amazing book. I really got to know and develope a love/hate relationship with the characters. The tempo of this book is steady and even, and is definately a page turner- I could not put it down. I highly recommend it to people who are new to Grisham, it's an excellent example of the tone and pace that is prevelant in many of his novels.

I enjoyed the first chapter very much. However, things deteriorated fairly quickly for me.

A book peopled with characters whom it is hard to identify with or like. The main protaginist is a boring drunk who finds religion. Enough said.

This isn't the illegal scam plot of some of my other favorite Grisham books, but it is by far the most thrilling opening, and plays out into a meaningful, although somewhat predictable, story. I'd recommend this book, along with A Painted House, to those who maybe aren't big fans of Grishams typical books.

I loved this book, read it on vacation, and devoured it within a couple of days. The opening scene is really memorable: a wealthy elderly patriarch/corporate owner calls his backbiting infighting family together for a reading of his last will and testament, who are carefully placed in various rooms in his high rise corporate headquarters, by close-circuit TV. Then upon finishing his strange presentation, something brutal, bizarre, and shocking happens that launches you, the reader, into a strange investigation with multiple paths and surprises at every chapter. I'd love to say more, it's one of the best opening scenes in a book I've ever read, but then - I'd be blowing some of it for you. So just get it and read it, you'll be really glad you did. Excellent plot development, and really surprising twists and turns, with warm-hearted moments and surprisingly inspiring messages. Fantastic book, one of Grisham's best.

I recommend this book highly to anyone who wants to read a great mystery story.I could not put the book down I thought every bit of it was great.This is an extraordinary novel by a gifted author. J.R. Malerba,he keeps the reader in suspense with all the action in this thriller. This author gives you value for your dollar. It is worth every penny and more. Buy this great book! You will not be disappointed.

What a nice favor a gumba of mine did in recommending this debut novel...it has interesting characters, superb "believable" plot lines and a nice pacing (I read it in one sitting).
You'll especially enjoy the last third of it when you feel you are almost right there on assignment and along side the FBI and NYPD detectives as they try to close the net on the mob terrorizing a major airport.
I hope this is just the first of Mr Malerba's books,with many more to come.
I could envision and would look forward to a series featuring his lead character NYPD Det. Vince Bianco

I just finished this book and I absolutely loved it! It was very well thought out and kept me interested every step of the way. I would definitely recommend this book to anyone interested in a good mystery. I feel like I've come to know Detective Bianco. I hope Mr. Malerba includes him in his future works...I think he's on to something!

This is a great deal and loved all three books. I highly recommend this product.

I enjoyed reading this book. It started off with alot of action then left you on the edge of your seat the whole time while reading. John Grisham did a good job at not revealing Patricks (the main character) plan on how he would get out of the whole situation. Right when you thought you knew what was going to happen next another twist is thrown in. You actually start to envy the charater Patrick because he is brilliant and has thought about everything. I recomend this book to anybody who has thought about packing up and leaving their old lifes behind.

John Grisham's Triology - The Partner/The Street Lawyer/A Time to Kill make for gripping reading. In the middle of a mesmerizing and frightning narration there is wonderful humor. I highly recommend these books to anyone who has read Grisham before or who is just getting to know his work.

Ciertamente es mi titulo favorito de todos los publicados por Grisham, puesto que soy estudiante de derecho me he identificado muchisimo con Rudy Baylor Personaje principal en Legitima Defensa, pues es un pobre estudiante con muy buena calificaciones y con deseos de salir adelante, es mas, la parte donde conoce a Kelly me parecio tan real, sobre todo cuando le encuentra en la joyeria y lo invita al cine, es increible es realismo con que Grisham lo describio, es el mejor autor de historias legales, mezcladas con un sutil toque de sensualidad en todas y cada una de las damas con que tropiezan los personajes en todos sus libros, tengo toda la coleccion y espero ansioso su ultimo A PAINTED HOUSE, en espanol.

I loved this book. All of John's books are great. This book I could not put down. I fininshed it in 3 days. It has been very well written and never seems predictable

In this book John Grisham introduces his main character by having him captured and tortued in South America. Then as the plot progresses, we find out he is a thief and possibly a murderer. But the reader senses that he really is a good guy and relys on the ever more complicated plot to come to his rescue and justify his actions for us.
John grisham doesn't disappoint us. As the plot becomes more appearent, made believeable by the writters' obvious familairarity with the Gulf Coast and building the readers understanding of the rest of the characters who weave in and out of the plot. The reader can't help but place judgements on all of the actions of the players.
But, of course, things never turn out the way you think they will. Mr. Grisham, with a brilliant ending, turns everything around, making us think we may have had that suspicion all along. This reader also feels that a "sleepless in Seattle" sequel would be very welcomed.
The Grisham fan club will call this one of his best.

I enjoyed listening to The Partner on my way back and forth to work. John Grisham has a way of taking away our daily cares and allowing us to live in the life of others.

This is one of my most favorite books of all time. I havent read it in years and am thinking of reading it again. Such a wonderful story.

John Grisham has learned how to end a book - although it's not always a happy ending or the one we'd like. "A Painted House" is a wonderful slice-of-life, coming of age (even at 7 years old) story. Great descriptive writing, wonderful imagery. A good read from start to finish.

I enjoyed the change of pace from Grisham's normal books, but like a lot of other reviewers, I didn't think it was believable that Luke was a 7-year-old, and that it ended sort of abruptly with seemingly no resolution of anything. The story seemed to be building up to a climax that never happened. While I did enjoy reading about life in rural Arkansas in the '50s, I just felt so let down at the end. I also thought that Tally, the teenage daughter of the Spruills, got a little too much enjoyment out of little Luke watching her bathe. Comments such as "You liked that didn't you?" and "Maybe I'll let you watch me again." seemed a bit disturbing for a 17-year-old girl to be saying to a 7-year-old boy.

A Painted House is a sweet story narrated by a 7 year old boy who gets in enough trouble to keep the reader's attention. It is one of those beautiful stories that should go on forever. A quick read in Grisham's spellbinding style.

After seing so many positive reviews i deceided to give this book a try. I must say it was interesting especially for a big city girl like me. I truely didnt know anything about farming and thought this would be real boring but to my surprise it wasnt.

Its very well written Luke, the 7 year old kid knows a lot of secrets and i can see that happening in real life as grown ups tend to trust kids with their secrets more than anyone else for some reason. I could also see myself telling a kid secrets...lol

I didnt like the end so I have to subtract 2 stars. WHere was the plot? Nothing really happened. I dont know why it was titled "the painted house", it should have been more the likely "The mysteries farm" or something. Maybe i missed something i dont know how some people see this book as one of the best books they ever read.

Its okay to read but dont expect too much.

I couldn't put the book down once I started reading. I would definitely recommend this book.

Continuing with my John Grisham binge (which I'm so not proud of, but I continue on with it anyway), I read this book, just randomly selected among many Grisham books at the local library.

I would have to say that this was my least favorite Grisham book so far. I found the characters uninteresting, the story uninteresting, the storytelling uninteresting. Just not one of his best, in my opinion - seemed like this one he cranked out just to meet some obligation to the book company. The minor twist at the end was enjoyable, but not enough to save the book. I just didn't like the style, tone or storytelling. For example, I figured after chapter 1 (when Patrick gets caught) they'd go back in time to give some details, rather than only progressing forward. But it wasn't meant to be. Really didn't enjoy this one much, just slogged through it.

I finished this book a while ago. The story is interesting but its just streched out too long. How did this guy make all this time to spend so much time with this old person and then to work day and night to set everything up etc?. He must have had 48 hr. days.
I did like the ending because i sorta did expected it but on the other side I didnt think this would seriously end like this. So it's okay to read but its not one of my favorite books.

A great lawyer is meticulous, calculating, aggressive, relentless, and prepared for anything. John Grisham lovingly shares an intricate plot to provide you with an unforgettable portrait of those qualities in action. In the process, you'll also see a man whose soul is offended by his profession.

Ultimately, this book is about a dream . . . a dream that may be more dangerous than an addictive drug. What will you do to capture your dream? That's what you'll be asking yourself after you read The Partner.

The beginning of the book seems like an international espionage thriller. A group of private detectives track down a fugitive to a little town in Brazil near the border with Paraguay. They pounce, and the fugitive is in for his worst nightmare . . . remorseless torture aimed at getting him to tell something he doesn't know.

Soon, an unlikely intervention creates a whole new vector for the story. The fugitive has to face the music from a lot of angry lawyers . . . including his former partners.

Like many legal thrillers, you'll be getting no more information than you need to know to follow the action. Pay attention to the questions that occur to you: Thinking about what might have happened is half the fun of this book.

If you aren't interested in the ins and outs of how lawyers think about criminal issues, you won't like this book as much as I did. I was impressed at how well the legal issues were displayed without being too technical. Remember that lawyers usually spend a lot of time thinking through how the opposing attorney will respond to various probes.

Watch out for the unexpected!

A totally unbelievable book pumped up with a lot of fluff. Grisham tries to make a hero out of a shallow lawyer with out a moral bone in his body. The only way he could of made this book good is if his hero had gotten raped in jail instead of coddled by judges and doctors who think its all right to rob and kill. Without the fluff the entire story line would last about thirty boring pages.

I honestly didn't know that I was reading non fiction until I was about 30 pages into this book. It kept me interested from cover to cover and it really made me think. It is so terrifying that innocent men and women can go to jail on such little evidence...I will not look at a deathrow inmate the same again. I'm so glad that John Grisham decided to write this amazing story!

This real-life story is very emotional, rousing and compelling and in my opinion also very exciting. Even if you know the outcome already and the writing style isn't out for suspense. The nonfictional narration is constructed as a history of a criminal case and less intended as a thriller. In the English edition in midsection there are photographs of some participants which help a lot to put oneself in there place and empathize with them. It is a book that gives a deep insight in the touching life of a wrongly convicted person, who is hit hard by destiny several times - the burst dream of a baseball career, alcoholism, drugs, women, schizophrenia and eventually the condemnation for death penalty. It is a distressing factual report of a human tragedy, put together from many conclusive pieces of a puzzle. To my mind no page is too long and no excessive information is given. Anyway I can recommend this book warmly to every empathic, humanely and politically interested reader.

This is book can be easily read and may be good for an airline ride or for a long wait somewhere, but will not stand the test of time and won't hold up what I call the "smell test". It is at least average but Grisham could do better. But you could do worse and if you are a Grisham fan, this is about average, not his best and not his worst.

I was very disappointed in this story, about 100 pages too long, the details were repetitive and I had to struggle to keep reading. Had it not been a John Grisham, I would have given up about a third of the way through it but I kept thinking it must get better.
Next time I will check his book out at the library first. I gave this one away a few minutes after completing it. Big sigh of relief that I was done with it!

An excellent book; an important book. The tone of the prose puzzled me for a while, but I realized eventually that there is a kind of dark allegory in the style that helps keep several themes going at once. The most obvious of these is the intertwined stories of the several characters, but the depth is created by interweaving the issues of Law, Capital Punishment, Due Process, Mental Health, to name just a few. The myriad minor characters provide a sort of cell structure to continuously regenerat the narrative. Grisham also has a plain respect for the basic story, and never intrudes, except for the rare expression of disbelief. A must read--read it!

Why do I love it? It is a great plot with a few twists and a good heart. I couldn't tell for awhile the motives behind the main characters, so it was an engaging story. I had not known much about the book beforehand, however. I think it helps if you are not too built up on the story...just know it's very engaging and you end up feeling connected to almost every character.

The book kept me interested, for the most part, but I never accepted the basic premise: that conspiracies, involving large numbers of people, can be maintained for the long haul. There is always the chance, the fear that just one of those inside the plot will "get religion" or sell their story to the tabloids, in which case there is pluperfect hell to pay. Not even the mob is leak proof all the time.

Conspiracies seem to abound with this jury, and the reader is never quite sure who is doing what and to whom. Piles and piles of money are at stake when a tobacco company is sued for selling the cigarettes that allegedly killed a man. If the suit is successful, more suits will surely follow, and more piles and piles of money will be at stake.

This being the case, it is logical to believe that tobacco companies might want to tamper just a tad with the juries. Ditto on Wall Street. But the people who run tobacco companies are not lamebrains, even though they may not be entirely forthcoming with the truth about their product. They know that if they get caught fixing the jury, the jig is up for them. Subtlety and deniability are paramount. But in this book, those two elements seem to be missing, and that's where the plot falls of its own weight.

The characters are nicely drawn. The courtroom feels real enough. The dialogue is right. Not being a lawyer, I can't comment on the legalities, but they sound OK. All I know is that I didn't accept the basic premise, and that is absolutely essential for the enjoyment of a book.

After my husband finsished this book on our vacation in 1996, I took a look at it and couldn't put it down!!! This was the first Grisham novel I ever read. Boy, was I hooked.

(I saw the Pelican Brief at the theatre when it came out; I went with my sister who read the book and said that she was so happy that the movie followed the book so closely. Of course there were subtle differences to benefit the needs of Hollywood.)

So, I waited and waited.... for the Runaway Jury movie to come out... it was so nice to be able to read a book before the movie came out and to be so excited to see how the wonderful book you read is adapted to the big screen! I was not disappointed!

If you haven't read this book and you like suspense, you've got to read it! You won't want to put it down.

If you haven't seen the movie, read the book FIRST!

Enjoy!!!

With all the new interest in non-Star Wars material, I decided to give John Grisham a chance. My mom recommended this particular book for me to start off with.

Plot:
The setting is Biloxi, Mississippi. The cast: twelve men and women. Their purpose? To determine if the widow of a man that smoked three packs of cigarettes per day should be compensated for her loss. The problem? There are people who will do and pay anything to see that the lawsuit turns out to their benefit.

Good:
The story is good. I enjoyed reading about the smoking trial, the evidence that each side provided supporting or discrediting smoking, and the antics of the trial. And I was impressed and amazed at the careful planning and strategy that Marlee and Nicholas Easter had to go through in order for their ploy to succeed.
Further, Grisham imbues this novel with subtle humor--nothing gut-wrenching, but just enough to ease back on the tension that grows with each page. Very well done and crafted.
The characters were pretty good on the whole. They are well-described, unique people thrown together against their will. They may be good, corrupt, indifferent, selfish, young, old but they are real. I was especially fond of Fitch, the villain, probably because it seems oxymoronic that a man who was addicted to alcohol would support smoking. The other character I enjoyed was Herman Grimes, partially because he seemed to be the only incorruptible one in the jury.

Bad:
The story may be good...but it takes a long time to get there. My book had 550 pages. While a lot happens in those pages and Grisham paces it well enough so you don't get bored, you still reach a point where you ask yourself, "Is this going anywhere?" "Where's the end?" and "Why is this important?"
Also, the protagonists (primary, at least), Nicholas Easter and Marlee were rather cold and unemotional. I tried to sympathize with them and like them, but they just weren't a likeable team. I was impressed with their ploy, but I had no feelings for them--not like many of the other characters (Hoppy, Derrick, etc.). Further, the explanation for why Nicholas and Marlee go through the hoopla of the trial makes little sense in light of the crazy events revealed in the conclusion.
Lastly, the story is rather far-fetched. It seems hard to believe that Easter would have been able to "hack in" to the jury system so quickly and easily, especially considering that Marlee and Easter are working independently on her own money. Also, Judge Harkin sure makes a lot of allowances for his rebellious jury that seems too placating. These and a million other convenient coincidences make it more difficult for a realistically minded person to enjoy this.

Dialogue/Sexual Situations/Violence:
Curse words consist mostly of da**, he**, sh**, bi***, and so on. Very mild compared to other books of its kind.
I was impressed with how Grisham was able to detail a sexual situation without going into graphic detail. However, there are still several scenes to note. When in sequestration, the jurors are allotted "Conjugal Rights". Sexual situations are described in a round-about manner on several occasions. Jerry and Poodle have a liaison (and Jerry is going through a divorce).
Violence is minimal to none. A man is threatened to force his wife to vote a particular way. Fitch has a bad temper.

Overall:
A very long book. That is my first thought after finishing this one. And one in which it is hard to root for the "good" guys, who have no feelings to sympathize with. And with a very confusing ending. However, I enjoyed the trial on such a controversial subject, learning how each side was duplicitous, and seeing the individual jurors. 3.5 rounded generously to 4 (for good writing, good humor, and suspense).

i wanted this sent to somewhere other than my home address and it was easy to do and got there perfectly without problems. great job!

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.

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!

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.