Rating: 
Summary: You'll forget most of it before you're done...
Review: A quick, enjoyable read that tells us almost nothing about anything in the book. It is a plot (a discovery of a motive for the death of two supreme court justices) that Grisham struggled to find characters for.Oh well... I wish I wrote enough books to have a few panned by the critics...
Rating: 
Summary: Mmmmm....I like it (english assignment)
Review: This was a good book. It was very suspenseful and fun for me to read. I have read some of John Grisham's other books and I think he has a knack for writing dialogue. I thought the dialogue in his later books was better than the Pelican Brief, but it was still good in this book. The story of the Pelican Brief was very well thought up and interesting. It was a fast-paced story about a law student who's written a brief on her theory about the deaths of two supreme court justices. After surviving a car bomb that killed her boyfriend and law professor, Thomas Callahan, she disappears in an effort to survive the spies and agents sent after her by the US government. When she meets reporter Gray Grantham, I was sort of relieved because starts associating with people in the book who end up dying. Gray Grantham didn't seem like he was going to die, at least until he'd done something very helpful for Darby Shaw, the main character. I admire Darby Shaw for her bravery and determination in completing the brief as well as staying alive. Her character was a good part of the book. She was smart, cunning, and, as it was written, very attractive at the same time. She's also vulnerable, but strong enough not to let it ruin herself. This book has inspired me to write and think nothing of what people might say, but what I will force them to think about afterwards. I though this book was good over all. There are some places where the writing in slightly awkward. The book also starts off fairly slow, but then speeds up and becomes hard to put downwhich is very impressive considering that I don't read much at all. I'd recommend this book to people who are interested in in politics and definitely those who are interested in law.
Rating:
Summary: A far fetched story...
Review: A young law student proposes a theory on a supreme court's judge murder. When this theory proves to be too close to the thruth, her life is in danger. The thought that only a young law student, brilliant as she might be, would come up with the right theory for these assasinations makes me happy this is only a story... I'd still like to believe that the FBI, CIA and other bodies who are supposed to handle these situations are far more compentent than pictured in this book... Sadly enough, most of them believe they aren't, especially after watching 'The X Files'.
Rating: 
Summary: Next to 'The Partner' this is Grishams best.
Review: Fresh after finishing 'The Firm' I had my wife pick up a copy of 'The Pelican Brief' and began to devour it as quickly as I could. It didn't take long to be captured by the character of Darby and her innocent way of life. We find out that quite by accident, Darby writes a 'brief' that quickly catches the attention of someone--WHO exactly that 'someone' is, well it takes a while to find that one out. It also takes a little while to figure out exactly what is IN the 'brief' to begin with. Now I am NOT a lawyer and it was a little high on techno-babble from a legal standpoint, but basically Darby makes a total assumption about some land in Louisiana, and it turns out to be right on the money: a plausible explanation of the deaths of two members of the Supreme Court. More than plausible, she is 100% right, which is when she get's the attention of those who would rather see the author of this mysterious 'brief' silenced. Darby is suddenly on the run, wondering whether or not her next move will be her last. Paranoid and terrified beyond words, Darby makes a desperate move and contacts a Washington Post reporter in hopes of convincing him of her story. It takes some doing, but he eventually comes around to her side, and this is where life becomes really interesting for Darby and her journalist friend. I have to say one thing about the movie version, Julia Roberts really WAS THE perfect choice to play Darby. Other than that, don't bother with the movie (as usual), go straight to the bookstore and grab a copy of 'The Pelican Brief' and sit back and enjoy. Another winner from Grisham.
Rating:
Summary: Good as usual
Review: Much can be said about John Grisham, but I will always defend for being one of the best suspense writers ever. 'The Pelican Brief' is another example for that. It's hard to ignore the awesome movie and not to think of Roberts and Washington, but when doing it, you have a lot of fun. The book is much more provocative and has a lot of suspense. It's the typical page-turner, a book hard to put away. This is not his best book, but it's one his real good ones.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent book!
Review: I loved the way the book kept me on the edge of my seat trying to figure out what the heck was going on. The suspense level was high, the story great, and the character fun to read about. Highest reccomendation
Rating: 
Summary: Not his best.
Review: I read this book on vacation and found it disappointing. Much of the suspense involved stuff that the main character, Darby Shaw, actually knew but that Grisham just wasn't telling the reader even as he was revealing a lot about what she thought and felt. You spend most of the book, as she tries to figure out who's trying to kill her because of what she knows, realizing that you'd have the key to the whole thing if you just could find out what Darby already knows about her own situation. Then after he's run you around enough (couple hundred pages) Grisham just opens up and tells you what's going on. Basically the book just teases and manipulates the reader. It's also a pretty long and goes on quite a bit after the cat is out of the bag- resolving the situation of characters who I just couldn't care that much about. I got the feeling that the book was mostly just a framework to publicize certain environmental issues that the author was interested in. I've also read Grisham's THE FIRM and while I didn't care for everything that happened in that book, it was a had much better suspense, pacing and characters- really hard to put down even if the main character wasn't always likeable. Grisham definitely can do much better than this.
Rating:
Summary: Good but predictable towards the end
Review: Excellent Grisham book, my favorite so far, excellent plot twist when Khamel was killed, lower level of predictability, but it was still there. He still needs to work on his endings. This book had a humorous ending. Well written.
Rating: 
Summary: Gibberish
Review: Worse than simply being a 'by-the-numbers' book, it introduces numerous characters that pose a threat to the cookie-cutter heroine, only to leave them as dangling plot threads with no resolution. Grisham generally shows strong promise in the first third, then falls apart, leaving me frustrated as a reader
Rating:
Summary: Good even after the movie
Review: My husband cannot understand why I prefer to read a book before I see the movie because it's such fun to see what they leave in, what they take out, how they cast the characters, etc. But I didn't have the opportunity to do so with this book. It was the wonderful movie with Denzell Washington and Julia Roberts which sent me looking for Grisham's books. I've been reading them in the order in which he wrote them and have found them all wonderful. The Pelican Brief exhibits very well something I often find in Grisham's work - the expert unfolding of the story and of the details about the characters' lives. This book, in particular, has a complex plot and a secret long-held within the pages of the book (and as well in the movie) that keeps you spell-bound. I found both main characters to be interesting and I kept wanting to know more about how they thought and how they ticked as they tried to save their lives. Read the book first and then see the movie!
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