Pelican Grief (The Pelican Brief - John Grisham)

Member Name: alcesuk

Product:	The Pelican Brief - John Grisham
Date:	12/09/04 (2347 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: A very enjoyable read

Disadvantages: Grisham has written better

John Grisham seems to be able to churn out novel after novel in the way that your gran bakes cakes. (I don't see the big attraction with baking myself...). In 'The Pelican Brief' Grisham has again provided his multimillion strong readership with an absolute gem.

Grisham's novels are all law/crime thrillers, and as an ex-lawyer the author is more than qualified on his subject. If unfamiliar with American Law his books can be a little confusing at times, but once the Grisham bug has been bitten you'll soon start walking around thinking you're a top lawyer, and constantly looking over your shoulder for the FBI..... an unlikely prospect in the quiet lanes of merrie englande.

'The Pelican Brief' is no exception, and begins with the brutal murder of two Supreme Court Justices. The President, although displaying public shock, seizes on the opportunity to select new Justices to his preferred political persuasion - or more to the point his advisor Fletcher Coal does, who controls the President like a puppet with strings throughout. The narrative mainly follows the story in the eyes of Darby Shaw, an attractive, redheaded law student at Tulane, New Orleans. Almost by complete accident she stumbles across a case in a law library, which leads her to write a brief (subsequently to be known as the 'pelican brief') pointing the finger at who sponsored the killings.

The situation is made all the more sensitive by the fact that her chosen suspect has close links with the presidency, and happens to be one of the largest donators of cash to the President. Without wishing to give too much away (I'm hoping some of you who read this may actually go and read this book!), the President tries to point the official investigations away from this suspect, so that he
can avoid losing face. When the brief turns out to have hit the truth square on the nose, Darby's lover is killed in a car bomb meant for her (Sordidly, her lover Thomas Callahan also happens to be her contract law professor...). This not only confirms the pelican brief, but leads to an exciting chain of events involving Darby's subsequent evasion of the hitmen sent after her. The chase takes us around the US and involves all the usual cash-only transactions, single night stays in hotels, clothes purchased for a single days use and constant hair style and colour changes.

The story moves wildly towards its conclusion by following the media. Gray Grantham of the Washington Post gradually catches up with the facts through various sources, and eventually meets up with Darby herself and together they gather the hard evidence they require for the story to be published, and the correct people to be punished. Grantham appears to do this out of his sense of duty to journalism, but probably more out of his desire for a Pulitzer, and after obtaining the photos from her college yearbook, a burning desire for his subject - Darby Shaw. Darby is driven by a longing for her lost lover, and a need to stay alive long enough so that the truth can be exposed.

The book ends with a rather clicheed meeting on a Carribean island which Darby has managed to escape to. After waiting for the furore to die down back in the US, Grantham eventually manages to get his girl.

'The Pelican Brief' contains flashes of top-drawer Grisham, but overall as a novel this is not one of Grisham's very best.

Summary: