Rating: 
Summary: Not too swell
Review: I had high expectations for this book. I have read several of John Grisham's novels in the past and they were spectacular. However, after reading this one I was dissapointed. The first half of the book is exciting and is definitely a page turner. After that, the story begins to fizzle out and it becomes less and less interesting. There is no big payoff. Not a single character is interesting nor lovable.If you enjoy legal thrillers, skip this one. Read "A Time To Kill" or "The Client".
Rating: 
Summary: Tidy yet Tired
Review: One of the main characters in the book, Teddy Maynard, is a wheelchair-bound CIA director. If any readers see the association to Teddy Roosevelt and Franklin D. Roosevelt (who was also in a wheelchair), you'll understand why Grisham picked this name. T. Roosevelt was often quoted as saying, "Speak softly and carry a big stick. . . . ", which also appears to be the invocation of Teddy Maynard, whose profound belief the world-is-incorrigible-but-I-am-not is the driving force behind the puppetry he has mastered over the many decades. I think calling him Franklin Maynard would have been too obvious for most people. As a matter of historical perspective, Theodore Roosevelt, whom FDR greatly admired, was also his fifth cousin. Why do I mention this? Because FDR was credited with bringing this country out of the 1930's depression, much the way Teddy Maynard is portrayed as believing he can bring this country (present day) out of its great complacency. So with a galloping plot about our lack of military, a rigged presidential election via money, and three judges who are all inmates at the same federal prison wreaking havoc on the lives of closeted gay men, Grisham is off and running. And believe me, he pulls out every cliche about political solipsism and doesn't stop there. While it is a good read, and not necessarily a good story, I was disappointed that the "bad" guys didn't get their comeuppance in the end as most do in a Grisham novel. Maybe wrecking, exhorting from, and blackmailing gay men just doesn't rank up there with Grisham as something "wrong." In fact, at the end of the novel, the three judges not only get away with all their chicanery, but they get rewarded as well. The only person who gets a shot to the head is the slimy lawyer Trevor, who's biggest crime was being stupid and an alcoholic. I think we can see where Grisham's priorities are when it comes to what's right and wrong (read: gay). And the topper? President Teddy Maynard, excuse me, I mean CIA Director Teddy Maynard, forces our poor closeted presidential hopeful Aaron Lake into a sham marriage, less Teddy reveal Lake's secret homosexual lifestyle! He's just as bad as the three judges he spent most of the book trying to take down. And that's how it ends. Lake gets married, the judges are pardoned with $2 million each, and Teddy retires with all his pain pills to the countryside. Isn't the world of Grisham nice and tidy?
Rating: 
Summary: The Brethren
Review: My review of a Grisham Classic
Reviewer: Mark McKee from Minnesota, USA The Brethren by John Grisham can be described as a spiderweb of crime and politics sewn by the prestigiouse and noble scum of society. Three judges, calling themselves the Brethren are confined in a federal prison for coorperate crimes and skandals. They however do not intend to waste their time, dreaming about money at night and organizing gay extortion in the day is how they spend their time in prison. Working through an extremely organized process the three judges or The Brethren have targeted wealthy individuals who are subject to extortion and gotten all the money they can from them. With hundreds of thousands of dollars in the bank already, and less than a few decades left in the slammer theyare workdig hard and joyfully panning their plans of freedom.
Meanwhile there is political unrest on capitol hill concerning the events taking place in the Middle East. America is being called to war and a select group of political executives are extremely worried about the United State's increasingly shrinking military budget. What America needs is a presidential candidate with the ability to fix america's military budget roblem and to take action regarding the affairs in the middle east. Aaron Lake is their man. carefully and tediousley chosen by the executive he is going to save America from the troubles oversea. The power of the executives has given Aaron's campaign virtually ulimited funds. With graphic TV commercials and stunning speaches concerning world affairs given by him, Aaron will win America and lead it to military dominence.
How do these two things tie together you as, everyone is soon to find out when correspondence between The Brethren and Aaron Lake is discovered. Read The Brethren and prepare to be taken to the insided of an electoral crisis that will leave you breathless.
Rating:
Summary: Judges, Gays and Mr. President: Three Lifestyles
Review: When I read this novel I know a little rough ideas of the three group of people we in Malaysia see very little. Even not accurately, Grisham (and his researhers) gave me something to talk about with friends regarding judges, gays and Mr. President ( I bluff sometime).
After all this book is Grisham's at his average mood. His writings are witty and entertaining but the basic idea is simple. Only colorfully decorated with weird people and background
Rating:
Summary: The Brethren
Review: I thought this was a very interesting read. It has a great gripping story line that was never boring, also with believable and interesting characters. The plot was original and different from any other book I have read, a very unique story line. Its about three ex-judges in a federal prison, who have nothing to loose. So they devise a scam to make money to start over after their prison sentences. Eventually their scam gets tangled up with a popular presidential candidate Aaron Lake. But there's a lot of risks involved in the scam. Both The judges and Lake are in danger of being found out. I enjoyed reading this book, and would recommend it to other readers.
Rating: 
Summary: Hugely disappointing
Review: John Grisham used to write good legal thrillers, with his best being "A Time to Kill" and "The Firm." But somewhere along the way, he seems to have figured out that all he needs to do is put his name on the cover to get an automatic best-seller. That is the only explanation we can come up with for his scandalously lazy and painfully disappointing "The Brethren." The story, such as it is, concerns several former judges who have fallen from grace and are now working off their debt to society in a federal pen. To pass the time, these wild and crazy guys amuse themselves by placing phony personal ads in gay magazines and then blackmailing anyone unlucky enough to fall into their trap. The fun stops, however, when their latest victim is a Presidential candidate backed by some powerful interests. "The Brethren" is fatally sunk by a number of factors, including wholly unlikable protagonists, an utterly ridiculous political subplot, and an ending in which nothing happens at all. In fact, the whole novel just seems to run out of gas, like the writer himself couldn't continue with it anymore. Sadly, it appears that John Grisham has gone the way of so many successful authors. He stopped thinking about his work and started writing purely on automatic pilot, knowing that people will buy it anyway. What a pity.
Rating:
Summary: Not too good... Not too bad either
Review: This novel evoked mixed feelings from me, in terms of being able to evaluate it. Instead of the trite poor-lawyer-just-out-of-college pulp that is normally thrashed out, this one looks at three former Judges (who are the Brethren), who have gone the wrong way, and continue to do so from prison.
On another thread in the story, is a very finely written account of the Political ascent of Aaron Lake, who the CIA thinks is flawless, and picks/coaxes/propels/uses him to be the front runner for the Presidency of the United States, to achieve its own (CIA) budgetary means.
Naturally, given these two sub threads that make up the plot of the story, the rest of the book involves on how the brethren can potentially deal a blow to CIA, Lake and hence their collective ambitions, without themselves ending up dead.
I have read Grisham before to know that he is capable of better. He has the variation in his style to go out of his realm like he did in Skipping Christmas (which I think came out later), but the story itself falls apart due to the sheer amount of holes it creates, with the all powerful CIA being portrayed as a conflicted institution, being invincible and incapable, and aggressive and scared witless at the same time. This conflict gave me, as a reader a little irritation. The over dramatization of the brethren, and portrayal of their life in the federal penitentiary, comes out as if the Penitentiary is housing inmates who are actually supposed to be institutionalized. Normally small kids fight over the stuff the Brethren preside.
That criticism aside, the characters of the Brethren and Teddy Maynard are very well developed. Grisham fails in developing Lake to be even close to likable for a person who could be running for the president. The prose is banal and everyday language with few metaphorical witticisms.
All in all, a run of the mill fiction book. Nothing great!
Rating:
Summary: John Grisham is capable of better.
Review: "The Brethren" are three former judges who have been stripped of their titles for their various crimes. They're locked up in a minimum security prison, where they're running a money making scam. The parallel plot is of the Presidential campaign of Aaron Lake, which is frighteningly prophetic (the book was published in 2000) of current events. The two plots don't meet until the CIA become involved, in a storyline that is reminiscent of Colonel Flagg of M*A*S*H (just as paranoid, but not as funny). The two storylines are hard to follow in the beginning of the book. A potential leading character, "Ned," was introduced and dropped. This is not Grisham's best work. There was not one character I *liked* until I was more than halfway through the book, and I wasn't crazy about him. If another author had written this book, it would have deserved four stars. However, I've read Grisham's earlier works and later works, and I know he's capable of better.
Rating:
Summary: John Grisham, not at his absolute best
Review: In this book, Grisham presents us with a team of rogue judges who are in prison, and to Aaron Lake, a presidential candidate. The author develops both of these stories side by side, but it remains unclear for many pages just how these two threads will merge. However, once the blackmailing scam run from the prison library is completely revealed to the reader, the only mystery left is what sqeleton Lake has in his closet, and even that isn't a huge stretch for the reader to figure out. The plotline in itself is quite interesting. Grisham does have the talent to come up with schemes that will bring his faithful readers back to read his next novel, but the telling of this one left me unimpressed. I didn't feel the tension building as I did with The Firm, for example, but rather I could just guess -accurately - ahead a few pages (or chapters) as to where the author was headed with this one. And since I like reading this type of book for the tension and the plot twists, I can only give it two stars, and hope that his next novel will be better.
Rating: 
Summary: My first Grisham experience
Review: I don't understand why so many people gave this a low review. This was the first John Grisham book I read and I loved it. He's been the only author that has been able to hold my attention throughout the whole book. The best part is, all of his stories are believable.
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