Product Description

Two Supreme Court Justices are dead. Their murders are connected only in one mind, and in one legal brief conceived by that mind. Brilliant, beautiful and ambitious, New Orleans legal student Darby Shaw little realises that her speculative brief will penetrate to the highest levels of power in Washington and cause shockwaves there. Shockwaves that will see her boyfriend atomised in a bomb blast, that will send hired killers chasing after her, that will propel her across the country to meet investigative reporter Gray Grantham, the one man who is as near the truth as she is.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #87522 in Books
• Published on: 1998-01-03
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 432 pages

From the Publisher
John Grisham's bestselling backlist newly repackaged with fantastic new covers

From the Back Cover
Two Supreme Court Justices are dead. Their murders are connected only in one mind, and in one legal brief conceived by that mind.

Brilliant, beautiful and ambitious, New Orleans legal student Darby Shaw little realises that her speculative brief will penetrate to the highest levels of power in Washington and cause shockwaves there.

Shockwaves that will see her boyfriend atomised in a bomb blast, that will send hired killers chasing after her, that will propel her across the country to meet investigative reporter Gray Grantham, the one man who is as near the truth as she is.

‘Fast and furious’ Daily Telegraph

‘A rattling good story’ New York Times

‘I would highly recommend it… a real page-turner’ Frederick Forsyth, Sunday Express

About the Author
John Grisham is the author of eighteen bestselling novels. He lives with his family in Virginia and Mississippi.

Customer Reviews

Entertaining but vaguely dissatisfying
This was my first John Grisham novel, and while it won't deter me from reading any of his other works, I'm not exactly going to be jumping on his bandwagon either. The premise of the story is simple enough. A brilliant young legal student writes her own theory about who murdered two Supreme Court judges and why. What she doesn't realise is that her theories are actually bang on target, and before long, the bad guys are out to get her.

For the first two thirds of the novel, I couldn't put it down. It was a bona fide page turner, but as more and more of the story unfolded, I couldn't help but feel that Grisham was somehow cheating me out of a better novel. The vast majority of the characters we meet in the book have already read the contents of Darby's brief, but Grisham decides to leave the reader completely in the dark until the last act. It reeks of convenient plot device : here we have twenty odd characters wandering around with full knowledge of The Brief, and not one of them feels the need to talk about its contents, just so Darby can have her big Narrative Moment several hundred pages into the book. I haven't seen the film, but it doesn't take much thinking to know how Julia Roberts must have played it!

And it's pretty much downhill from there. With the big mystery out of the way, the novel devolves into the usual scenarios. Will the bad guys find Darby ? Will she expose the villains ? Will she survive ? It doesn't take a genius to work it out, and the continual cat-and-mouse chases are fairly standard, been-there-done-that, thriller fare.

The last hundred or so pages of the novel are padded out beyond belief. I kept waiting for something more to happen, and when it didn't, I wondered why Grisham didn't just wrap them up into one small chapter. My only other major complaint is that the 'twist' at the end of the book about who were and were not the bad guys is laughable, and added nothing whatsoever to the story.

If I could sum this book up in one phrase it would be 'ho-hum, where's my next book?' Not dreadful, but not exactly the highlight of my reading career either.

My First Book
I am 14 and this is the first book i read all the way through of my own accord i have read others for school but this is the first out of school one. It was brilliant i read it in four days and couldn't put it down. It gives an insight into the world of law, something which i am interested in, and it is obvious that Grisham studied law. it also is a real page turner being a whodunnit with many unusual twists, not to mention the very tiny brush with romance. Comes very highly reccommended. Worthy of 5 Stars!!

Interesting yet slow
Conspiracies, lawyers, and the White House. These are the words that describe the book "The Pelican Brief". Having read some similar books by Grisham and others. This book presents the repeated and much used storyline "Me vs. the World". It was nothing new and albeit some parts were far-fetched. But the story is an interesting one.

The story centres around a law student, who investigates the assassination of two Supreme Court judges. Her startling brief on the subject only hits too close to home and results for the fight of her life...

"The Pelican Brief" proved to page turner in many parts, but like any good road, had a lot of potholes that made the storyline slow and intolerable.

There is one thing about Grisham which I find admirable in his writing. He begins with several storyline threads that may seem totally unrelated and then like a master artist, weaves them into the mainstream storyline. A good book and an interesting read.