Editorial Reviews:
In suburban Georgetown a killer's Reeboks whisper on the front floor of a posh home... In a seedy D.C. porno house a patron is swiftly garroted to death... The next day America learns that two of its Supreme Court justices have been assassinated. And in New Orleans, a young law student prepares a legal brief... To Darby Shaw it was no more than a legal shot in the dark, a brilliant guess. To the Washington establishment it was political dynamite. Suddenly Darby is witness to a murder -- a murder intended for her. Going underground, she finds there is only one person she can trust -- an ambitious reporter after a newsbreak hotter than Watergate -- to help her piece together the deadly puzzle. Somewhere between the bayous of Louisiana and the White House's inner sanctums, a violent cover-up is being engineered. For somone has read Darby's brief. Someone who will stop at nothing to destroy the evidence of an unthinkable crime.
John Grisham's head was full of movies when he wrote The Pelican Brief, which is such a brisk page-turner you could use it to dry your hair. He had Julia Roberts in mind for the heroine, Darby Shaw, a brilliant Tulane law student who comes up with an ingenious theory to explain the baffling assassinations of two Supreme Court justices in one day. They were shot and strangled by ace international terrorist Khamel, who loves the film Three Days of the Condor, but government gumshoes don't get what connects the deaths. Silly government guys! They died so the conservative president, who just wants to be left alone to play golf, will appoint new, conservative justices who will help out a case involving an industrialist who is the enemy of pelicans and other living things. It's all spelled out for them in Darby's brief. She likes to do legal feats to impress her boyfriend, her boyish law prof Thomas (who, like Grisham, prefers to shave at most once a week, and is cool, smart, and antiauthoritarian). The prof likes to paint her toes red, in homage to Susan Sarandon in Bull Durham. (Sarandon also starred in the film version of Grisham's The Client.) But when Thomas gets splattered by a car bomb meant for Darby, she escapes the hospital and hooks up with a Washington Post reporter, Gray Grantham, who sleuths like the guys in All the President's Men. Grisham wishes he hadn't written The Pelican Brief quite so quickly (his first novel, A Time to Kill, went through dozens of drafts), but Pelican's very breathlessness contributes to its dreamy, cinematic chase-o-rama atmosphere.
Customer Reviews:
Displaying 1 to 5 of 214 total reviews (Page 1 of 43):
 Crap novel
I like John Grisham about every 4th or 5th book. His Rainmaker was terrific, and The Firm was rather sweet too. This novel, his third after The Firm and A Time to Kill, was crap--serious diarrhea. Grisham has stated in interviews he writes a book every six months. Reading the prose of this novel, I'm surprised he didn't do it in six weeks or even six days.
Where do I start in listing all the horrible aspects of this novel? I don't know but here goes:
- The flat, flat characters. None of the characters have any personalities to speak of--no distinguishing traits, no quirks, no hobbies, nothing. They simply exist to move the plot along.
- The boilerplate, cliched dialog. This is the novel where characters say stuff like "Let's go for a walk," followed up, "Wow, this is a nice walk." It's THAT bad. And when people get mad, they say stuff like, "I'll sue you for a million bucks if you touch me." Ohh, God, reading the dialog must've lowered my IQ to Forrest Gump levels.
- The dead prose. Buildings are either "small" or "big." And people, when mad, "snort" and "sneer." Of course, some people might say, "Well, Grisham's going for a minimalist approach." Well, there's good minimalist prose and there's crap minimalist prose--Grisham's the latter. If you want GREAT, unique minimalist prose, read James Ellroy. If you want to read prose apparently written by a high-schooler, read Grisham here.
- The plot. This story is essentially one entire chase sequence, and not a very interesting one at that. I won't dis the totally unrealistic nature of this story--it goes with the thriller territory--but I don't want to spend how many hours reading about flat characters hiding in hotels and saying stupid, kindergarten stuff that are in really bad B-list movies.
So . . . in conclusion, this is a really terrible, terrible novel. It's not as terrible as, say, a James Patterson novel, but it's close. If you haven't read Grisham before, stay away from this novel and read The Rainmaker instead. And The Firm and The Innocent Man. Everything else you can pretty much ignore. And if you're a masochist, well, why don't skip Grisham altogether and read James Patterson or Clive Cussler or Allan Folsom.  A Real Page Turner
Grisham is a great writer and started great with his first three novels with this being his third. I give a five star rating when I can't stop turning the pages and do not want to put the book down. The story has backgrounds in New Orleans. Washington, D.C., and New York City.
This story was non-stop action and suspense with rivetting excitment. It has a heroine, Darby Shaw, who is beautiful and smart. She is a law student who does a Brief on the murder of two Supreme Court Justices. This causes a lot of people to be murdered and puts Darby on a run for her life. This all started with an injunction to stop oil drilling in the marshes of Louisiana and try to save the home of the Brown Pelicans.
 Corrupt Lawyers Act on Behalf of a Corrupt Client to Manipulate Corrupt Politicians and Be Chased by Investigative Reporters
If you are thinking about going to law school, this wouldn't be a bad novel to read to get a sense of what the profession is all about before you commit yourself to three expensive (and potentially boring) years of education. I don't recall a book that displays so many of the corrupt sides of legal practice and education in a single fictional tale. If that weren't enough, the book also delves deeply into the international assassination genre and creates a modern-day fictional version of investigating a government cover-up at the highest levels, a la Watergate.
But a pure heart among all the jaded ones can make a difference . . . that's the morale of this story as beautiful, dedicated, and brilliant law student Darby Shaw speculates on what motive might tie the assassination of two Supreme Court justices back to a pending legal case. Improbably (the weakest part of the story), she sniffs out the potential that no one else does -- that this is an attempt to fix an appeal.
The Pelican Brief as a title is a misnomer. Darby writes her thoughts (a crude essay, not a brief) about what might be going on and shares them with her professor lover who passes them along to a counsel for the FBI. Pretty soon someone is taking her ideas seriously, and the pages will fly through your fingers as fast as you can read until you get to the end.
John Grisham doesn't quite have his genres down in this book, and apparently the success of The Firm meant that his editors were more interested in getting The Pelican Brief published than making it better. You could fix this novel into a five-star effort with about two hours of editing to reduce the improbabilities and speed up the slow parts.
But if you don't mind having unlikely events pull a riveting story together, you'll have a lot of fun with The Pelican Brief. I listened to the reading by Alexander Adams and felt that the story worked better listened to than it would be if read silently.
I admire John Grisham for the imagination to conceive of such a wild story. He kept surprising me with his plot developments, and the trip was almost all fun.
My favorite book. Ever.
Rather shocked to see any negative reviews. This book is a wonderful page turner. I was lost in the world of small intelligent law student, fighting for her life inside the world of DC powerhouses and the elite rich. Gripping. I still think about the book often, and I read it about 6 years ago. Great read. The Pelican Brief
"Four-thirty A.M. He listened to the voice, jumped to his feet, and eight minutes later was in the oval office. . . "They're both dead."' Not only was the president in shock, but all of America was stunned to know that two of their Supreme Court justices were murdered in the same night. Darby Shaw, an innocent law student, guessed who the criminal master mind behind this evil trick was. Once the FBI got a hold of the brief her world was instantly turned upside down. Darby was scared to death, only trusting one ambitious reporter and constantly watching her back.
The Pelican Brief is an action filled, legal thriller and kept me turning the pages. "The explosion knocked her to the sidewalk. She landed on all fours, facedown. . . She gaped in horror at the parking lot." (pg.127) this event really picked up and started the story. Though the plot line can get slow at times within a chapter you will be reading as fast as you can to find out what happens next. I would recommend this book for all mature readers, since this novel has a complex plot line and some language not suitable for children. Don't miss this gripping novel.
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