The Client

Mystery and thriller

First published: 1993
Print length: 482 pagesBantam Dell, 2005

Description

Eleven-year-old Mark Sway witnesses a suicidal lawyer’s final crisis and emerges with information that powerful adults are desperate to obtain. He may know where the body of a missing Louisiana senator is hidden, placing him inside a conspiracy connecting politics, business, and organized crime. With his younger brother hospitalized after the traumatic encounter, Mark faces urgent questioning from the FBI and threats from criminals who need his silence. He hires Reggie Love, an attorney experienced in protecting vulnerable children, to stand between him and both sides. Moving between Memphis and New Orleans, the novel pits a frightened but resourceful boy and his lawyer against prosecutors and Mafia figures who treat the truth as something to seize, suppress, or exploit.

Reading profile

About this profile

Collected’s assessment, not reader ratings. Complexity runs from 1 (least demanding) to 5 (most demanding).

Writing: How much attention the sentences and language require.
Ideas: How much interpretation or abstract reasoning the book asks of you.
Structure: How much you need to keep track of speakers, timelines and connections.
Background knowledge: Prior knowledge needed to follow the book, beyond what it explains.
Emotional intensity: Emotional pressure, from gentle (1) to intense (5). Separate from difficulty.

Writing style

Dialogue-driven · Direct · Journalistic

Pace

Brisk

Tone

Dark · Suspenseful · Tense

Structure

Linear

Focus

Mystery · Plot · Relationships

Emotional intensity

4 / 5

Reading complexity

1–5 · higher means more demanding

Writing: 2 / 5
Ideas: 2 / 5
Structure: 3 / 5
Background knowledge: 1 / 5

Themes

Crime and punishmentFamilyJusticePowerSurvivalTrauma

About John Grisham

John Grisham is an American novelist, former criminal lawyer, and former Mississippi legislator whose legal thrillers turn professional procedure into fast-moving contests over evidence, leverage, and survival. His prose is direct and dialogue-driven, with a journalistic clarity that keeps complicated cases legible. He builds suspense by narrowing a protagonist’s options as courts, corporations, government agencies, and criminal networks exert pressure from different directions. In The Firm, a young lawyer’s enviable new job becomes a trap once professional secrecy binds him to both organized crime and an FBI investigation. The Rainmaker shifts attention to an inexperienced advocate confronting an insurer, using the mechanics of a civil lawsuit to show how money and desperation shape access to justice. A Time to Kill places courtroom strategy within a Mississippi community divided by racial violence and intimidation. Grisham repeatedly returns to lawyers who must work inside compromised institutions, and to ordinary or vulnerable people whose lives depend on how those institutions use information, authority, and fear.

Book details

For the print edition listed above.

Publisher: Bantam Dell
Language: English
ISBN: 9780385339087

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