The Firm

Synopsis

This story is set in 1985, although it was written in 1981. John Grisham tells us a story of the Mafia and a young student out of law school who could have any firm in the country but choose lowly Bendini, Lambert and Locke.

This boy is Mitchell McDeere, who is at the top of his class at Harvard Law and so he has his choice of the best in America. He has got three job offers and decides to take the one of a well-paying firm in Memphis. But unfortunately this should become a deadly mistake.

When Mitch McDeere signs on with Bendini, Lambert & Locke of Memphis, he thinks he and his wife, Abby, are finally on their way. The firm leases him a BMW, pays off his school loans, arranges a mortgage and hires him a decorator. He ignores the fact that five lawyers died over a period of 15 years. Mitch McDeere should have better remembered what his brother Ray - sitting since fifteen years in a Tennessee jail - already knew. You never get nothing for nothing.

So Mitchell McDeere finds out the Firm is owned by the most powerful Mob family in Chicago, and that they are laundering big sums of money through dummy corporations around the world. Before long he stumbles upon a secret that could bring every member of the firm, including himself, in jail. After talking with the FBI, who tells him among other things that his home phone was bugged and that there also are bugs in his car, in his home, even in the bedroom and that the firm has killed the lawyers and that they are killing everybody who does not want to work with them, Mitch still does not want to believe it.

His wife, Abby, wants him to leave the firm because it will make him a wreck, due to the fact that he works about 90 hours a week in order to become a partner as soon as possible. Eddie Lomax, a friend of Mitch's brother Ray, who is in prison, who is hired by Mitch to investigate into the case of the dead lawyers, also advises Mitch to leave the firm. But only some hours after the conversation Eddie is killed. Eddie's secretary, Tammy Hemphill, understands the real situation and meets Mitch. Also the FBI contacts Mitch again. They want him to copy all illegal files of the firm. They 'promise' to take him to prison, if he would not co-operate,. If he agrees to co-operate he will get 2.000.000$, a new identity for him and his wife and the FBI would help Ray to escape from prison. Now McDeere realises that he is trapped and cannot escape without risk. So he has two choices: 1. He can obtain incriminating evidence against his co-workers, turn it in to the FBI, and avoid jail. If he does this, however, he can be killed by clients of the firm, the Mafia. 2. McDeere can avoid the FBI, work at the firm, and live a prosperous life, only to be arrested at some point in the future and serve a lengthy jail sentence. McDeere is faced with a tough decision, and after he decides, he must face the consequences. Mitch is caught between a rock and a hard place, with no choice -- if he wants to live.

As Tammy promises to help him, and as he finds a way not to break his professional discretion, he decides to work for the FBI.  So he takes every file out of the building, and Tammy assists him. At one point he takes them with him to a wrong client, Frank Mulholland, and Tammy copies them in the neighbouring office. Another time Tammy plays a prostitute in Cayman and steals the office keys from Avery Tolleson. So they find a lot of different ways to copy the files. Also his wife Abby helps them.

But then the firm finds a leak in the FBI: 'Alfred', an FBI man who betrays Mitch. Because of this leak Mitch decides to take the money, his wife, and his brother and to escape without telling the FBI where he is going. While he is fleeing he sends the files to the FBI: So the FBI and the Mafia are searching for the three McDeeres, who are hidden in Andi's Hotel. Then Ray notices a woman who follows them and holds her up. So they have to escape from the police as well. They kill a Mafia man, who wants to kill the McDeeres and escape at the end on a boat - like in nearly every novel: There is a Happy-Ending!

Comment

John Grisham has written with The Firm one of the most intense legal thrillers of our time.

It is simply a great book, another spectacular blockbuster, but certainly not without its flaws. I found it lagged a little at the beginning, but I cannot regard that as a setback. Most thrillers take a while to build up, after all. The first chapters certainly were good, as they established character and mood, and set me up for surprises. Once the conflict was established, I could not put down the book; it became a real page-turner! This book, the firm, holds you on suspense until about the middle of the book, where you realise what will happen. The code names and the delaying of information does make the book a bit more interesting. Of course the idea of  having a law firm as a front for the Mafia where once you get in you cannot get out - alive, was extremely entertaining. The book brings out the reality of corruption in some law firms that look too good to be true.

But, when I read The Firm, I noticed a very large similarity to The Client. Maybe it was even a mixture of The Pelican Brief and The Client. It has The Pelican Brief's runaway, chase, know-something-wrong plot and it has The Client's know-too-much plot and it's suspense.

About the book

Topic

The book was not only about a up coming lawyer torn between a law firm that was doing bad business and the Federal Bureau of Investigation, but it was also about a little thing we call peer pressure.

Mitchell McDeere was a confused man not knowing whether to co-operate with the government or with the people that he worked for. Teenagers can relate to this because it's like not knowing whether to listen to the authority in their lives or their friends. Of course in the book the main character chooses the right thing, unfortunately too many teenagers choose to go the opposite way.

This book teaches a valuable lesson, it states simply that when you are caught between the right decision and the wrong decision, the right decision is always the best way to go.

Recommendation

First of all I would recommend The Firm to anyone who has plenty time to kill.

Then, of course I would highly recommend this book to anyone who has never read any of Grisham's books or has not the slightest interest in law or any matters related to it. I also think, that The Firm is the right book for anyone who gets excited of stories/thrillers about the cold war in business.

The Movie

Already in 1990, before the book was published, Paramount Pictures paid $600,000 for the rights to the Firm. The movie however was a big disappointment.

But at least the ending was much better, because it ended differently from the novel. In my opinion the novel's ending is a kind of flat. But it does leave you with a smile on your face because Grisham gives you a tease on the second to last line.

The author

'Grisham writes six months a year'

Life of John Grisham

John Grisham was born on February 8^th in 1955 in Jonesboro, Arkansas. He was raised in a family of five children. During his youth he moved around a lot because his father was a construction worker. They lived in many different places, for example in Crenshaw, Mississippi. Finally the Grisham family settled in Southaven, a little town outside Memphis, when he was twelve and then he started studying at the Southaven High School.

During his school years he was an athlete and he wanted to play either professional football or baseball. This interest of his made him go to study at the Northwest Mississippi Junior College in 1973. At the Northwest he played baseball for a year and he really did not care for his grades, he just wanted to play baseball. Grisham moved to the Delta State University after a year at Northwest to improve his skills in baseball. At the Delta State University he found out that he really was not meant to be a baseball player and so he decided to concentrate on his studies, which he had not done before. So he moved once again, this time to the Mississippi State University (1975). John Grisham really liked the Mississippi State University and he started studying for an accounting major. Since he could not become a professional baseball player anymore he now thought of becoming a tax lawyer. Grisham graduated from the Mississippi State University in 1977 with an accounting major. After studying at the Mississippi State University he went to law-school at the University of Mississippi, from which he graduated in 1981. In the same year as he graduated from law-school he married Renee Jones.

John Grisham was now a lawyer and he got himself an office in Southaven where he practised criminal and civil law. He was also politically engaged at this time and in 1983 he was elected to the Mississippi House of Representatives. During his time at Mississippi State University he had started on two books, none of them were ever finished. In 1984 he started writing a third. This time he finished it. The original title of the book was Deathknell, but the publisher did not like that so he changed it to A Time to Kill. In April 1987 three agents called and the year after, in 1988 the book was sold to Wynwood Press. A year after it was published and 5,000 copies were printed. During these years he had been writing his second book, the Firm, which was finished in 1988. In the same year he started writing on his third book, The Pelican Brief. The Firm was then his big hit. It was the book that made him famous. In 1990 he left the House of Representatives and moved from Southaven to a farm outside Oxford.

Today he lives in Charlottesville, Virginia with his wife Renee and his two kids Ty and Shea. Grisham writes six months a year and coaches his son's Little League team the other half. He only gives a few interviews a year and he has said that he hates reviews. John Grisham just wants to write books and live peacefully and undisturbed with his family.

His books

From 1991 to today he has published one book a year.

The Time To Kill                     (1986)

The Firm                                  (1988)

A Pelican Brief                        (1992)

The Chamber                           (1993)

The Rainmaker                        (1995)

The Runaway Jury                   (1996)

The Partner                              (1997)

The Street Lawyer                   (1998)

Ever since he wrote the Pelican Brief Grisham has published a book a year with the same result. It should be said that all his books have been best-sellers and that six of them have become movies (The Client, The Pelican Brief, The Firm, The Time to Kill, The Chamber and The Rainmaker). John Grisham has also written the script to the movie the Gingerbread Man and a script to a baseball movie.