The Brethren » (Abridged)

The master of the legal thriller, John Grisham was a criminal and civil lawyer in Mississippi when his first book, A Time to Kill, was published. But it was his next book, The Firm, that became a blockbuster and established him as king of the genre.

Trumble is a minimum security federal prison, home to an assortment of criminals - drug dealers, bank robbers, swindlers, embezzlers, tax evaders, and others from up and down the social scale. There are also three former judges who call themselves The Brethren. They meet each day in the law library where they write briefs, handle cases for other inmates, practice law without a license, and sometimes dispense jailhouse justice. They also spend hours hatching schemes to make money. Then one of their scams goes awry. It snares an innocent on the outside, a man with dangerous friends. And The Brethren's days of quietly marking time are over.

Entertainment Weekly

A jailhouse mix of greed, murder, and blackmail.