The biggest scam is Grisham himself (The Brethren - John Grisham)

Name: buchanan17

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Product:	The Brethren - John Grisham
Date:	18.07.01 (271 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: easy to read, won't be made into a film

Disadvantages: slang writing style, terrible anti-climax

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 reasonably well, and this story has a couple of notionally separate stories that are bound to clash headlong (it tells you on the back cover). But the settings are fairly absurd - the CIA rigging a presidential nomination for a president that will double arms spending - perhaps this isn't so absurd given the petrol / gas lobby funded Bush. A congressman is selected by the CIA and has the most lavish election campaign in history funded.

The other half of the story is three judges now in prison dispensing justice - its an open prison so its tame stuff. They also start a scam by searching for gay men through wanted ads and then blackmailing them. Of course, it is obvious that our president elect wil be caught, even though he is a widower. Wouldn't be a story if he didn't swing both ways.

So, the scam builds as they realise who they have caught - this is about 3/4 of the way through the book, so the reader thinks it may hot up, with twists and turns aplenty.

But no. Look away if you don't want to know the result, but it has to be the tamest ending since i read Noddy as a child. They ask for $2 million - and they get it, and get out of jail and...er.. that's it. It is so profounding and irritatingly disappointing, that I hate this book. It showed reasonabl
e promise, simplicity of the writing style aside 9and that coudl eb construied as accessibility), but i won't read one of his books ever again, even at £3.84. And this must be quite a good one of his, or there must be Grisham fans aplenty out there as this book got an 87% rating before I dropped it down a notch or two.

Nothing to recommend it, and i can't see Harrison Ford playing the lead man.

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