Many have seen the movie, but believe me the book is still
worth the read. The book begins with the main character
Mitch McDeere fresh out of
law school and in desperate need
of a job interviewing with one of the top law firms of
Bendini, Lambert & Locke of Memphis. What makes this law
firm so unique (and Mitch doesn't know any of this until it
is too late) is they only hire a certain type of person.
They have to be married, ambitious, and white. This firm
was more like a good old boys country club from the 60's
then a law firm. What makes Mitch different then most
lawyers is that he comes from poverty and has a
brother serving time, but the law firm doesn't know about his
brother’s incarceration at the time of the interview.
Of
course Mitch takes the job and moves his pretty wife
Abby to Memphis to work for the International tax law firm.
They wine and dine in him by giving him money for a home, a
new BMW and other perks that are sure to impress the young
and naive and of course win his loyalty. Well, the reader
can tell pretty quickly that something is defiantly wrong
with this law firm. Right off, they bug Mitch’s house and
phone lines in order to monitor his daily life. And by
Chapter 5 two lawyers are suddenly killed, possibly because
their
loyalty started to lack. This firm rarely has anyone
quit but they do have a high mortality rate.
Well, the FBI also think this high mortality rate is
peculiar along with some other strange tax work that that
have noticed so they approach Mitch and present him with an
offer that he wishes he could refuse but can’t/ In the
meantime Mitch is getting smart (he’s not a
Lawyer for
nothing) and knows that something most be going on in the
firm. So, he hires a private detective that knew his
brother to look into the deaths of the five lawyers from
the firm.
Suddenly his firm suggests a trip to the Cayman Islands for
Mitch and another lawyer and Mitch is ecstatic because he
has never been anywhere so exotic. However, one night on
the beach he is seduced by a local prostitute the firm has
sent there so that they would have pictures of his
infidelity in case his loyalty from the firm should ever
waiver.
Mitch decides to tell his wife what is going on and she
does not take it well. And in another turn of events the
private detective he hired turns up dead and his secretary
comes to visit Mitch because she fears it has something to
do with his case. Suddenly, Mitch is approached again by
the FBI but this time it is an agent that he happens to
have gone to college with. Mitch fears that the FBI will
stop at nothing to get his cooperation. Of course all along
Mitch had his own suspicions about the firm, suspicions
that he has actively been investigating on his own. For
example, when he was in the Caymans he visited the dive
master who owned the boat that two of the dead lawyers had
been on when they blew up. This man told Mitch that he did
not believe it was an accident which just fueled Mitch on
more.
And this is where the book gets good in true John Gisham
style. Mitch must race against the clock to try to get
enough evidence against the firm, save his brother, and get
out of this little scheme in a better situation then when
he started it. Does that mean he fully cooperates with the
FBI? Does he truly turn his back on his lawyer firm and all
48 lawyers involved? What does his wife think of him in the
end, where their marriage survive his affair? These
questions can all be answered by reading this wonderful
page turner of a book.
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