The Brethren - John Grisham

Well, a Grisham novel, could that not be summed up in a couple of lines, Conspiracy, Good (little) Lawyer, Bad (Corporate) Lawyer (or Bad Law), good guy wins out in the end? Not this one, I have not been a fan of Grisham's latter novels, finding that the majority to follow the formula outlined above, I was tired of this and Grisham?s unoriginal subject matter, always taking a popular subject that the population of the world seemed to think was unfair on them (the smoking lobby, the medical insurers etc) he had a point but it was populist. There is nothing wrong with being populist, but their needs to be some originality too and contrary to Mr Grisham's views ...  Read the complete review

Synopsis Three judges (Joe Roy Spicer, Finn Yarber and Hatlee Beech) now sit in Trumble prison after being found guilty of embezzling funds from various places. Despite being caught with their hands in the cookie jar on the outside, they can't help but try and make some easy money whilst on the inside. They devise a plan to snare married men who reply to a personal advert from a young man. Their plan is going well, until one day they attempt to entrap the wrong man, a man who has some very powerful allies, who are able to expose or dispose of The Brethren and Trevor their lawyer on the outside. My Thoughts There is another major ...  Read the complete review

We've all seen no end of John Grisham books turned into films with Harrison Ford in them. They are half decent films, so I thought I'd give one of his books a go - especially as tesco are selling them at £3.84 a pop. Well, cue great disappointment. First, the quality of writing is close to appalling, may be not in content but in style. Its real tabloid stuff, so easy to read, but... perhaps it's becuase the publisher couldn't even be bothered to run a UK spell checker over it so we get "gray" and "...or" etc. And it is full slang - not in the speech, but in the descriptive text. Nonetheless he does describe ...  Read the complete review

Firstly, this book is written by John Grisham, which means that you get the usual well-written book, so that once you start it, you don't put it down till you finish. (At least, that's what happened to me. I read it in a weekend.) What makes this one different is that there aren't really any good guys. It's the story of how some crooked judges are able to run a scam from inside a jail, paralleled with how a completely evil general tries to buy an election and start a war. The scam itself is really the hero of the story. I often caught myself thinking "Isn't that clever?". Also, Grisham shows his usual cynicism of lawyers with a ...  Read the complete review

I first got into Grisham a few years ago and I am slowly but surely getting through his books. The ones I have read have normally been quite pacey and a can't put down type of book due to the complex stories and thrilling action. For those of you that have never touched a Grisham book (are there such people?), he specialises in law stories. So the plots in a basic format tend to be good lawyer fighting justice or seeking fufillment or bad lawyer trying to work the system. The Brethren is somewhat different. I don't know quite what it is really.... there still is a fair amount of pace in the story....it just seems to lack lustre. Now this ...  Read the complete review