The Street Lawyer
A Novel
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4.3 • 438 Ratings
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- $7.99
Publisher Description
#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • “Compelling . . . another timely tale from John Grisham. [The Street Lawyer] shows not only that Grisham has his finger on the public pulse but that he’s also out to prick its conscience.”—Chicago Tribune
Michael was in a hurry. He was scrambling up the ladder at Drake & Sweeney, a giant D.C. law firm with eight hundred lawyers. The money was good and getting better; a partnership was no more than three years away. He was a rising star with no time to waste, no time to stop, no time to toss a few coins into the cups of panhandlers. No time for a conscience.
Then a violent encounter with a homeless man stopped him cold. Michael survived, but his assailant did not. Who was this man? Michael did some digging and learned that his attacker was a mentally ill veteran who’d been in and out of shelters for many years. Then Michael dug a little deeper and found a dirty secret, and the secret involved Drake & Sweeney.
The fast track derailed, the ladder collapsed. Michael bolted the firm and took a top-secret file with him. He landed in the streets, an advocate for the homeless, a street lawyer. And a thief.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
America's most popular author is arguably its most popular crusader as well, tilting his pen against myriad targets, including big law (The Firm, etc.), big tobacco (The Runaway Jury), big insurance (The Rainmaker) and now, in perhaps his sweetest, shortest novel, against anyone, big or little, who treats the homeless as less than human. The expected powerhouse opening involves the hostage-taking--by an armed, homeless man who calls himself Mister--of nine attorneys of a huge law firm headquartered in D.C. Among the nine is narrator Michael Brock, an antitrust lawyer who receives a faceful of blood when a police sniper blows away Mister's head. "I'm alive! I'm alive," Michael cries like Ebenezer Scrooge, but, like Scrooge, this greedy hotshot is ripe for a moral awakening. The next day, Michael visits the shabby offices of Mister's attorney, Mordecai Green, who explains that Mister and others had been illegally evicted from makeshift housing on orders from a real-estate development company represented by Michael's firm. Inspired by Green and shaken by his firm's complicity, Michael volunteers at a homeless shelter. When a family he meets there dies on the street, and turns out to have been among the evictees, Michael quits his job, goes to work for Green and, using as evidence a file he steals from the firm, aims to sue his former employer on behalf of the evictees. In turn, the firm places Michael in its crosshairs, pressuring him to give up the file through legal maneuvers, having him arrested and hints of darker means. The cat-and-mouse between Michael and the firm is vintage Grisham, intricately plotted, but the emphasis in this smoothly told, baldly manipulative tale is less on action and suspense, which are moderate, than on Michael's change of heart and moving exploration of the world of the homeless. Dickens would be well pleased, and so will Grisham's fans. 2.8 million first printing.
Customer Reviews
Made me think, and care!
The author wasn’t the only one learning about the travails of the homeless and the street life they endure. I see the homeless every day and want to throw a $5 McDonalds coupon at each one but have never done it. There are so many stories of how the homeless become so that I get overwhelmed by the problem. How does it get fixed when the author brings homelessness to our own governing center of the USA where not much gets fixed it seems. EVERYONE should read this hard to read book and ponder fixes and write congressman if so inclined. Thank you for opening my eyes Mr. Grisham. Now it’s up to me to do something isn’t it!
It was a great book
This is the 1st book I ever read for fun I was 13 I'm 25 now. He really brought me into the story I still reread it every now and again. Definitely worth the time and money to read. This book made me fall in love with John Grisham as an author.
Excellent read
Grisham at his sweetest. A lovely main character fighting the good fight.