The Client
John Grisham, 1993
★ 4.06 from 469.4k ratings on Goodreads
A boy who knows where a body is buried becomes the most wanted witness in Memphis, and the only lawyer who will help him is one step from losing everything. A tense family story wrapped in a legal chase, told in plain prose that keeps unease close and morality nagging.
Feels like joy, unease and dread. About family, society and morality.
Who it’s for
You may like it if you enjoy legal thrillers built around a child witness and a scrappy lawyer under pressure. Be warned that many readers find the middle slow and overlong, and some feel the legal payoff and thriller tension do not fully deliver.
Why read it
Grisham draws on courtroom experience to show a boy and a lawyer cornered by adults with power, offering a morally uneasy story about loyalty and survival.
A page from the book
What it costs a boy to become the man of the house at seven.
They sat next to each other on the log under the tree, smoking quietly and staring at the grassy clearing beyond the shade. Mark was in fact more mature than Ricky at the age of eight. He was more mature than any kid his age. He’d always been mature. He had hit his father with a baseball bat when he was seven. The aftermath had not been pretty, but the drunken idiot had stopped beating their mother. There had been many fights and many beatings, and Dianne Sway had sought refuge and advice from her eldest son. They had consoled each other and conspired to survive. They had cried together after the beatings. They had plotted ways to protect Ricky. When he was nine, Mark convinced her to file for divorce. He had called the cops when his father showed up drunk after being served with divorce papers. What readers say
Readers often call the book an entertaining, suspenseful legal drama with memorable characters, but many also find it slow, overlong, and implausible, with some saying the thriller elements and legal payoff disappoint.
John Grisham.Grisham practised law in Southaven, Mississippi, writing his first novel in the hours before work each morning; The Client was his fourth novel.
Books that feel like this
More by John Grisham
The Rainmaker
John Grisham, 1995
A broke law student sues an insurance company for a family it refused to help, and finds out what a lawsuit really costs.
The Pelican Brief
John Grisham, 1992
A law student's hunch about two murdered Supreme Court justices makes her the target of a hunt she never asked for.
The Street Lawyer
John Grisham, 1985
A young associate witnesses a terrifying heist in a high-stakes law firm, forcing him to confront the true power structures that lie beneath the veneer of corporate justice.
Where to get it
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Questions readers ask
- Is The Client for me?
- You may like it if you enjoy legal thrillers built around a child witness and a scrappy lawyer under pressure. Be warned that many readers find the middle slow and overlong, and some feel the legal payoff and thriller tension do not fully deliver.
- What is The Client like?
- A tense family story wrapped in a legal chase, told in plain prose that keeps unease close and morality nagging. Feels like joy, unease and dread. About family, society and morality.
- What should I read after The Client?
- If you liked The Client, try The Bourne Identity (Robert Ludlum), The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time (Mark Haddon) and To Kill a Mockingbird (Harper Lee).
A taste of the feed
The uncanny peace that can arrive in the middle of drowning.
And there was heat, a strange moist heat at his temple that seared through the freezing water that kept swallowing him, a fire where no fire should burn. There was ice, too; an icelike throbbing in his stomach and his legs and his chest, oddly warmed by the cold sea around him. He felt these things, acknowledging his own panic as he felt them. He could see his own body turning and twisting, arms and feet working frantically against the pressures of the whirlpool. He could feel, think, see, perceive panic and struggle—yet strangely there was peace. It was the calm of the observer, the uninvolved observer, separated from the events, knowing of them but not essentially involved.
The Bourne Identity · Robert Ludlum
How a father says I love you without touching his son.
I stepped outside. Father was standing in the corridor. He held up his right hand and spread his fingers out in a fan. I held up my left hand and spread my fingers out in a fan and we made our fingers and thumbs touch each other. We do this because sometimes Father wants to give me a hug, but I do not like hugging people, so we do this instead, and it means that he loves me.
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time · Mark Haddon
Some injuries become the way a childhood gets dated.
When he was nearly thirteen, my brother Jem got his arm badly broken at the elbow.
To Kill a Mockingbird · Harper Lee
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