From Our Editors
Brimming with heart-pounding suspense and legal intrigue, the novel
that placed John Grisham on the literary map
forever changed the way the public looks at the law. In
The Firm, a young attorney is drawn to a
successful law firm in Memphis where the perks are good - but the
secrets are deadly. Grisham is the best-selling
author of A Time to Kill, The Client and The
Chamber.
From the Publisher
At the top of his class at Harvard Law, he had his
choice of the best in America. He made a deadly mistake.
When Mitch McDeere signed on with Bendini, Lambert &
Locke of Memphis, he thought he and his beautiful wife,
Abby, were on their way. The firm leased him a BMW, paid
off his school loans, arranged a mortgage and hired him
a decorator. Mitch McDeere should have remembered what
his brother Ray -- doing fifteen years in a Tennessee
jail -- already knew. You never get nothing for
nothing. Now the FBI has the lowdown on Mitch''s firm
and needs his help. Mitch is caught between a rock and
a hard place, with no choice -- if he wants to live.
From the Jacket
"Taut, fast and relentless... A ride worth taking."-San
Francisco Chronicle.
"Keeps the reader hooked... From the creepy first chapters... to
the vise-tightening midsection and on to the take-the money-and-run
finale." -Wall Street Journal
"Irresistible... seizes the reader on the opening page and propels
him through 400 more."-Peter Prescott, Newsweek.
About the Author
Long before his name became synonymous with the modern legal
thriller, John Grisham was working 60-70 hours a week at a small
Southaven, Mississippi law practice, squeezing in time before going
to the office and during courtroom recesses to work on his
hobby-writing his first novel.
Born on February 8, 1955 in Jonesboro, Arkansas, to a construction
worker and a homemaker, John Grisham as a child dreamed of being a
professional baseball player. Realizing he didn''t have the right
stuff for a pro career, he shifted gears and majored in accounting
at Mississippi State University. After graduating from law school
at Ole Miss in 1981, he went on to practice law for nearly a decade
in Southaven, specializing in criminal defense and personal injury
litigation. In 1983, he was elected to the state House of
Representatives and served until 1990.
One day at the DeSoto County courthouse, Grisham overheard the
harrowing testimony of a twelve-year-old rape victim and was
inspired to start a novel exploring what would have happened if the
girl''s father had murdered her assailants. Getting up at 5 a.m.
every day to get in several hours of writing time before heading
off to work, Grisham spent three years on A Time to
Kill and finished it in 1987. Initially rejected by many
publishers, it was eventually bought by Wynwood Press, who gave it
a modest 5,000 copy printing and published it in June 1988.
That might have put an end to Grisham''s hobby. However, he had
already begun his next book, and it would quickly turn that hobby
into a new full-time career-and spark one of publishing''s greatest
success stories. The day after Grisham completed A Time to
Kill, he began work on another novel, the story of a
hotshot young attorney lured to an apparently perfect law firm that
was not what it appeared. When he sold the film rights to
The Firm to Paramount Pictures for $600,000,
Grisham suddenly became a hot property among publishers, and book
rights were bought by Doubleday. Spending 47 weeks on The New York
Times bestseller list, The Firm became the
bestselling novel of 1991.
The successes of The Pelican Brief, which hit
number one on the New York Times bestseller list, and The
Client, which debuted at number one, confirmed Grisham''s
reputation as the master of the legal thriller. Grisham''s success
even renewed interest in A Time to Kill, which was
republished in hardcover by Doubleday and then in paperback by
Dell. This time around, it was a bestseller.
Since first publishing A Time to Kill in 1988,
Grisham has written one novel a year (his other books are
The Firm, The Pelican Brief, The Client, The Chamber, The
Rainmaker, The Runaway Jury, The Partner, The Street Lawyer, The
Testament, The Brethren, A Painted House, Skipping Christmas, The
Summons, The King of Torts, Bleachers, The Last Juror,
The Broker, Playing for Pizza, and The
Appeal) and all of them have become international
bestsellers. There are currently over 225 million John Grisham
books in print worldwide, which have been translated into 29
languages. Nine of his novels have been turned into films
(The Firm, The Pelican Brief, The Client, A Time to Kill,
The Rainmaker, The Chamber, A Painted House, The Runaway
Jury, and Skipping Christmas), as was an
original screenplay, The Gingerbread Man.
The Innocent Man (October 2006) marked his first
foray into non-fiction.
Grisham lives with his wife Renee and their two children Ty and
Shea. The family splits their time between their Victorian home on
a farm in Mississippi and a plantation near Charlottesville,
VA.
Grisham took time off from writing for several months in 1996 to
return, after a five-year hiatus, to the courtroom. He was honoring
a commitment made before he had retired from the law to become a
full-time writer: representing the family of a railroad brakeman
killed when he was pinned between two cars. Preparing his case with
the same passion and dedication as his books'' protagonists,
Grisham successfully argued his clients'' case, earning them a jury
award of $683,500-the biggest verdict of his career.
When he''s not writing, Grisham devotes time to charitable causes,
including most recently his Rebuild The Coast Fund, which raised
8.8 million dollars for Gulf Coast relief in the wake of Hurricane
Katrina. He also keeps up with his greatest passion: baseball. The
man who dreamed of being a professional baseball player now serves
as the local Little League commissioner. The six ballfields he
built on his property have played host to over 350 kids on 26
Little League teams.
