The Pelican Brief: A gripping crime thriller from the Sunday Times bestselling author of mystery and suspense

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And Darby realises that her brief, which pointed to a vast presidential conspiracy, might be right. Someone is intent on silencing Darby for good - somebody who will stop at nothing to preserve the secrets of the Pelican Brief... What follows is a classic cat and mouse thriller. The bad guys want Darby dead and Darby, alone and friendless, is running for her life. Grisham is a two-time winner of the Harper Lee Prize for Legal Fiction and was honored with the Library of Congress Creative Achievement Award for Fiction. Grisham pithy dialogue and fast pacing really moves this one along nicely, as any decent thriller should. Yes, he keeps you guessing for some time regarding the people behind the Brief, and also explores some nasty behind the door politics among the white house, the FBI and the CIA. Good stuff all around. While thrillers never tend to age well, the politics depicted here have-- money in politics, conservatives wanting to abolish abortion (yeah😢) and get rid of environmental standards-- sound familiar? What has not aged well are the characters. Callahan is a drunken buffoon and why Darby is attracted to him is rather inexplicable. Further, what is a law professor doing sleeping with his students? Via various dialogue by-play, this is an established pattern. Can you say Title IX?

The Pelican Brief by John Grisham: 9780385339704

The focus of the film version of The Pelican Brief is to get the viewer engrossed in the question of not just whether Darby and Gray will survive, but even more whether they will fall in love. The story prominently appears in the Post, over the objections of the president and his staff. One of the implicated lawyers commits suicide. The President is expected to announce he will not seek re-election. Mattiece disappears. Shaw settles on an island in the Caribbean and is joined by Grantham, who agrees to stay for at least a month. Forget about solving all these crimes; the signal triumph here is (spoiler) the heroine’s survival. Book Genre: Crime, Drama, Fiction, Law, Legal Thriller, Mystery, Mystery Thriller, Novels, Suspense, ThrillerTo 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 someone has read Darby’s brief. Someone who will stop at nothing to destroy the evidence of an unthinkable crime. I was surprised by that because I’d seen the 1993 movie made from Grisham’s novel many times, and my memory was that it focused on the relationship of the two characters Darby Shaw (Julia Roberts) and Gray Grantham (Denzell Washington).

The Pelican Brief by John Grisham - Goodreads Editions of The Pelican Brief by John Grisham - Goodreads

Darby soon realised that her brief was a lot more than a hypothetical when people she loved and cared about start dying. A master at the art of deft characterisation and the skilful delivery of hair-raising crescendos' – Irish Independent I find John Grisham's books to be sexist. I'll just say it. I know it won't make me popular, but there it is. His female characters are all outrageously sexual, earth-shatteringly beautiful, and lusting after the main male character with a Romeo-and-Juliet intensity. The male is always the main character, he always has to protect the woman, and he's always imperfect. Cheats on his wife, alcohol addict, greedy, sleazy, or possessing some other deep character flaw. But the goddesses Grisham creates still want these men, who in turn seem to treat them as objects. The women always flirt relentlessly, seem to have a peculiar aversion to bras, and are also helpless in some way. Darby decided to test herself by putting her considerable intellect to the task of finding an answer. What she comes up with is considered interesting but implausible. What Darby didn’t know was that she had just scratched a pimple that is now turning septic.Four crime-solving friends face off against a killer in San Francisco in the Women's Murder Club novel that started James Patterson's thrilling series. That quote above is why I even read political thrillers. They tend to say things that we think but are too scared to actually think about. This was good but it also had lots of cheesy moments with the main character. Of course, she had to be a hot law student that everyone drooled over. I read this book shortly after watching the movie and was not disappointed. In fact, the film follows the book closely.

The Pelican Brief by John Grisham | Goodreads

The length of time it took to tell the story was unnecessary - this would have been more effective as a novella with less names. Grisham is known for delivering great big, bloated political thrillers; at 141 minutes, it shows in this mightily involved thriller. The Pelican Brief is low on colorful villains and memorable visuals and loaded with grim, grey scenes where characters are doing research or having conversations. The actors are well cast and effective. Viewers will appreciate the fact that the complex plot isn't dumbed down, though it's a rather disappointing letdown of a film from director Alan Pakula, who made the classic All the President's Men. It’s a high-paced rush to find and pull together the facts and documents necessary to enable Gray, his editors and the Post to bring the story to light, and, despite all the killers running loose, the book’s ending is reminiscent of the 1976 movie All the President’s Men, directed by Alan J. Pakula. Enter the labyrinthine world of internationally bestselling author Dan Brown with his first two spellbinding thrillers featuring Robert Langdon:Taut thriller about a young law student whose legal brief about the assassination of two Supreme Court justices causes her to be targeted by killers. Not sure of whom she can trust but realising that she needs help and lots of it puts her faith in Gray Grantham, a reporter from the Washington Post, who is one of the few people who really believes that Darby is in grave danger. The kind of exciting journalism that is depicted in Grisham’s gripping and well-paced novel and Pakula’s gripping and well-paced All the President’s Men is still practiced by a handful of newspapers. Come on, Director. In two hundred and twenty years, we've assassinated four Presidents, two or three candidates, a handful of civil rights leaders, couple of governors, but never a Supreme Court Justice. And now, in one night, within two hours, two are assassinated. And you're not convinced they're related? (PG 26) Forced to go on the run in New Orleans, she is aided by a journalist who helps her unravel a conspiracy involving senior government figures.