The Client (Level 4) » (ESL Reader Edition)

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.

In a weedy lot on the outskirts of memphis, two  boys watch a shiny Lincoln pull upt ot the  curb... Eleven-year-old Mark Sway and his younger brother  were sharing a forbidden cigarrette when a chance  encounter with a suicidal laywer left Mark knowing  a bloody and explosive secret: the whereabouts of  the most sought-after dead body in America. Now  Mark is caught between a legal system gone mad  and a mob killer desperate to cover up his crime.  And his only ally is a woman named Reggie Love,  who has been a lawyer for all of four years.  Prosecutors are willing to break all the rules to make  Mark talk. The mob will stop at nothing to keep  him quiet. And Reggie will do anything to protect  her client -- even take a last, desperate gamble  that could win Mark his freedom... or cost them  both their lives.

Publishers Weekly

Fans of the bestselling Grisham will be pleased to note that he is once more on Firm ground: his latest legal thriller offers a clever, compelling plot coupled with two singular protagonists sure to elicit readers' empathy. Eleven-year-old Mark Sway, taking his kid brother for a smoke behind their Memphis trailer park, witnesses the suicide of a lawyer ``driven crazy'' by a lethal secret. Before he dies, the man confides to Mark where the body of a recently murdered U.S. senator lies buried, and the game's afoot. Trailed by the police, the FBI and assorted Mafia types (the deceased politico was the victim of ``a successful New Orleans street thug''), Mark retains--for one dollar--the services of Reggie Love, a 50ish female lawyer. This uncommon attorney-client relationship adds an affecting, unusually humanistic layer to the novel's tension-filled events. Mark, raised by a divorced mother and wise beyond his years, thinks chiefly in terms of movies and TV; Reggie, a street-smart survivor of an acrimonious divorce, is often unsure whether to hug or slug her precocious client. True to form, Grisham employs just enough foreshadowing to keep the suspense rolling (``Neither of them could know that . . . ''), and propels his action at the requisite breakneck pace. Occasional plot improbabilities and stylistic quibbles--a few fuzzy characterizations; overstatement of already obvious points; Mark's sporadic adult phraseology--will not deter readers from enjoying a rousing read. 950,000 first printing; Literary Guild and Doubleday Book Club main selections; Reader's Digest Condensed Book selection. (Mar.)