[jackdawson]

TITLE: The Pelican Brief
AUTHOR: John Grisham
GENRE: Legal Thriller
PUBLISHED: 1992
RATING: ★★★☆☆
PURCHASE LINKS: Amazon , Kobo
MOBILISM LINK: Mobilism (Book 3)

Review:
DESCRIPTION: On a single night two Supreme Court justices are neatly, permanently removed from the bench. The killer? It could be none other than Khamel, international hit man extraordinaire. But who hired him — and why? Was it a hate group? Revenge for some past Court decision? One legal student stumbles across the truth, but will she be able to survive to tell the tale?

REVIEW: One night it proved to be. Ancient, ailing super liberal Abe Rosenberg, ''probably the most hated man in America,'' dies at home, gunned down along with two attendants. Hours later, Glenn Jensen, young and moderate but a secret homosexual, is strangled at a gay-porn theater. The killer is assassin Khamel, a man of international fame, but the real mystery is who put him up to it?

Young, brainy, gorgeous Tulane law student Darby Shaw, who—just for fun, and to impress her law-prof lover — researches all the big cases headed for Supreme review. While going through this one, she suddenly sees light. She puts together an improbable but ingenious report, which gets her and everyone around her in trouble. A copy of Darby's ''Pelican Brief'' gets passed, almost as a joke, to the FBI and the White House, and within 48 hours, a car bomb intended for Darby blasts her lover and his car. The truth hits her and instinct of self-preservation takes over, she runs.


Does all of it seem a bit far-fetched? I was in two minds as well. But the storyteller is a masterful one, he kept me engrossed. Darby is a refreshing character, full of vitality. She teams up with a snoopy reporter Grantham to get to the bottom of things. This is the good part because when they team up to find a witness to corroborate her theory, there's genuine narrative excitement, the pace becomes better and lifts the novel above the story.

Darby discovers the only thing common to both the judges, they were both environmentalists. They were coming in the way of an oil tycoon's, a crazy one if you ask me, controversial plans for development. So he had them removed, forever. This part of the story seemed off to me. Why take such a risky road and get two SUPREME COURT JUSTICES killed?

Another thing that put me off was the end. It was anticlimactic.And they lived happily ever after... kind of end. **SPOILER**Darby and Grantham tell their story and then she is whisked off to a new land with a new identity. He joins her later.**SPOILER**

Certainly not as good as the other books by Grisham in terms of plot and pace, it thrills at times but not enough for me.