The Firm

Rating:
Summary: Enthralling from cover to cover
Review: John Grishim painted a fantastic, thrilling, and absolutely enthralling story in,"The Firm." There is absolutely no predicting the ending with all of the twists and turns put into this great book. I found myself cluthing the book and breathing hard until I reached the end, then I begged for more.

Rating:
Summary: Predictable all the way through
Review: You read the book jacket and you know the whole story. Except for a small bit at the end of the book, there is nothing clever or original. There are no surprises or turns. Everything is very predictable. The book just goes through motions.

Rating:
Summary: A Book You Can't Put Down!
Review: The Firm was full of suspense from the beginning right to the end. It was one of those books where you can't wait to find out what happens next. This is one of my favorites by John Grisham.

Rating:
Summary: Tension has never been this fun
Review: Mitch McDeere is your average mid-western farm country kind of guy, except that he's about to graduate third in his class from Harvard law school. He lives in a small apartment, drives a broken down car, and celebrates special occasions with Chinese food. He wants to make it big. He has no idea how big it's going to be... Grisham's story of a promising young lawyer recruited by a law firm that fronts for the Mafia is one of the fastest-paced, most suspenseful books to come along in a long time. What Grisham lacks in character development he makes up for in tense confrontations and deception on all sides as Mitch is surrounded by his partners, the FBI, and Mafia killers. The FBI wants his testimony, and the Mafia wants his head. Grisham grabs the reader on page one and doesn't let go until the last word. Anyone looking for non-stop excitement and surprises should look no further.

Rating:
Summary: This book was Awesome
Review: I loved this book and the movie was great exspecially Tom Cruise he looked so good! Not that you would care but the book was great and I suggest you read it!

Rating:
Summary: Awful all the way through
Review: Everyone has a book or a movie that stands out as an all-time stinker. Mine is "The Firm". I was the beach for a week with nothing good to read so I picked up a paperback copy of this book at a 7-11. Let this be a warning to us all-- don't buy literature at the same place you buy chili dogs.

I was lying on my towel reading this supermegaseller wondering what all hoopla was about. OK, this guy joins a law firm run by the Mafia. Uh, why would the Mafia want to operate it's own law firm? Since when are lawyers worried about handing organized crime members as clients? Innocent until proven guilty, right? And why in God's name would the Mafia want to have their in-house firm in MEMPHIS? I mean, fuhgetaboutit.

Then you have our hero, Mitch. Mitch is of course perfect, Harvard law, college quarterback, married to the perfect woman. Why this brainac decides to work for a firm he's never heard of and no one he knows has worked for and has no reputation beyond Tennessee is incredibly stupid. I thought one of the big perqs of going to a place like Harvard was to network, to meet the future movers and shakers in the world so you can become a mover and shaker yourself. Instead, Mitch heads off to Memphis to work for this shadowy firm. Great career move.

Then, as he realizes that the firm is run by the Mob and that if he tries to leave he'll be killed like a whole bunch of other lawyers in the firm (didn't he check THAT out, either?), he decides to take on the whole enterprise without any help from that fine taxpayer-funded organization, the FBI. Say what you will about big government and Waco and coverups and whatnot, if I ever have to take on the Mafia and it's life or death, I want the Feds on my side.

But of course Mitch does everything on his own, rejecting any help and insulting the FBI agents investigating things and all-in-all acting like some pretetious brat. I kept waiting for him to get his head stuck in a vise or something like that but no such luck. When you find yourself actively rooting AGAINST the protagonist of a novel, you know you're in trouble.

I was also quite disgusted by the fact that even though Mitch has a failing of the will, so far as his marriage goes, itnever causes him any grief whatsoever. He never tells his wife and she's none the wiser, which I thought showed even clearer that Mitch is a pretty lousy human being and that Grisham didn't want to tarnish his golden boy narrator with something as nasty as the truth.

Grisham's prose was pretty humdrum and in places annoying (I think he mentioned Red Stripe beer 47 times when Mitch was in the Caymans). But the book certainly wasn't exciting, certainly didn't make any kind of logical sense, certainly didn't have an inspiring hero, and certainly didn't have much suspense. So why was it such a huge success and why did it spawn the whole Grisham publishing phenomena? You got me.

Rating:
Summary: Disappointing, to put it mildly
Review: My first Grisham book. My last. Oh, I didn't buy the book; I borrowed it. Thank God!

Boring. Unbelievable plot. Flat characters. How a brilliant top-notch lawyer can get suckered up to this firm shows the effort Grisham had put in his characters.....

Don't read it! It's got no entertainment value or literary content.

Rating:
Summary: The Firm
Review: Spell binding. Grisham stays within the south and deals with the F.B.I., local law enforcement, lawyers etc. as though he himself were there. Easy reading, a book once begun you don't want to put it down.

Rating:
Summary: Great quick read
Review: This is an original concept written in a simple, realistic way. If you like compelling stories, with lots of suspense and tension, check out THE FIRM.

Rating:
Summary: Tripe
Review: This book is a waste of paper and print. If Grisham had spent half the effort on consistent plot development and characterisation that he did on describing Memphis, it might have been bearable. The book wraps up with "Oh yeah. In case I hadn't mentioned it, X and Y had been going on the entire time, so this is how things happened as a result." "The Firm" is a literary debacle, and that is putting it kindly.