The Pelican Brief

by John Grisham

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BEST SELLER • In suburban Georgetown a killer's Reeboks whisper on the front floor of a posh home... In a seedy D.C. porno house a patron is swiftly garroted to  death... The next day America learns that two of its Supreme Court justices have been assassinated. And in New Orleans, a young law student prepares a legal brief...

To Darby Shaw it was no more than a legal shot in the dark, a brilliant guess. To the Washington establishment it was political dynamite. Suddenly Darby is witness to a murder—a murder intended for her. Going underground, she finds there is only one person she can trust—an ambitious reporter after a newsbreak hotter than Watergate—to help her piece together the deadly puzzle. Somewhere between the bayous of Louisiana and the White House's inner sanctums, a violent cover-up is being engineered. For someone has read Darby's brief. Someone who will stop at nothing to destroy the evidence of an unthinkable crime.

Don’t miss John Grisham’s new book, THE EXCHANGE: AFTER THE FIRM!

• ISBN10: 0385421982
• ISBN13: 9780385421980
• Publish Date: 15 February 1992 (first published 1 January 1992)
• Publish Status: Active
• Publish Country: US
• Publisher: Random House USA Inc
• Imprint: Doubleday & Co Inc.
• Format: Hardcover
• Pages: 384
• Language: English
• URL: https://penguinrandomhouse.com/books/isbn/9780385421980

Reviews

[MurderByDeath]

I haven't read this one in at least a decade, and I was happy at how well it stood up.  Dated, of course, although not quite as badly as I expected.  At one point Grantham ends a phone call and "puts the phone on the floor", which stopped me in my tracks for a moment, until I remembered: big landline phone.  Some of the money numbers are hilarious, but not unexpected.   What's truly frightening is how many parallels can be drawn between Grisham's President and the orange wonder-douche currently squatting in the oval office.  I know, I know, you can find parallels anywhere if you look hard enough, but honestly it doesn't take much effort to see that Grisham's clueless, blustering President, who cedes all authority to Fletcher Cole while spending most of his time in the Oval Office practicing his putting and wishing he was on the course, depressingly prescient.    As for plotting, I still hold this one as one of the most intricately plotted books I've ever read.  I don't mean Darby's story, but the conspiracy that Darby uncovers - as many times as I've read this, it never gets old, never fails to enthral me.  The plotting goes a long way towards making up any inadequacies in the writing itself (if Darby told anyone, one more time, about how much she'd survived to date, I thought I might shoot her myself).   Still a good read!