| Product: |
The Street Lawyer - John Grisham |
| Date: |
08/05/08 (51 review reads) |
| Rating: |
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Advantages: Hard tackling of the subject, well written
Disadvantages: Some may be shocked
The Street Lawyer is the 9th novel from the award winning legal thriller author John Grisham.
The Plot
Michael Brock is a promising young lawyer on his way fast up the ladder in law firm Drake & Sweeney. Following a hostage situation where a man known as Mister sermons the hostages (including Michael) on the plight of the homeless and their lack of legal representation, Michael decides to investagate the streets, and comes upon a young boy who has died following his family being wrongly evicted from their home by his law firm.
Michael goes covert in finding out the corruption behind the eviction, and seeks retribution for the family and attempts to bring the company down. Can he get the job done before the authorities clam him down for thieving legal documentation?
My Opinion
Grisham lets the reader stumble on a different side of the elgal profession here, and discusses the values of a 'street lawyer' in comparison to the bigwigs of a top law firm. Excploring the homeless situation, and the adage that money gets you money, he sermons the reader on morals and values, but does so at the same time as providing a gripping tale of retribution.
As a lead character, Michael Brock is typical of John Grisham: the young hotshot lawyer who has a promising future with a big company halted by an attack of the morals is a situation well tackled by Grisham in many of his previous novels. However, this is not a tactic that bores me as a reader of his books, because he manages to create such a different aspect each time he writes.
In The Street Lawyer, Grisham portrays the wealthy as the guilty, and the poor as the hard done by. We all know that this generalisation is not always true, but he does highlight the advantages of money and the disadvantages of not having it, and also highlights the importance of the underdog, that one person who is willing to do what is necessary to do the right thing in the end and to bring those who have done wrong to justice. Brock puts himself in the firing line.
I thoroughly enjoyed this delve into street lawyering, and am glad that Grisham took a time out from some of the more glamorous legal aspects of his books and touched on a subject from the streets. He does not hold back and handle the subject matter lightly, and some regular readers of his may be shocked by the more blunt nature of this nvoel in comparison to his others, but it is worth it.
Conclusion
Well written, and hard hitting writing.
I rate this book at 4 stars out of 5.
The book is available from amazon.co.uk for £4.19.
This review may also be posted on ciao.co.uk.
Thanks for reading.
Summary: The Street Lawyer - John Grisham's 9th novel
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