The Client

Mark Sway, 11, witnesses a Mafia lawyer's suicide, which puts him in danger from Barry the Blade & a politically ambitious U.S. attorney. In the two years since The Firm first captured the imagination of America's readers, John Grisham, with three consecutive number-one bestsellers, has become one of the most popular authors of our time. Now, in The Client, he has written a novel so irresistible, so thoroughly entertaining and satisfying, that it is sure not only to please his millions of fans, but to win him new ones as well. This is the story of eleven-year-old Mark Sway, who, as the novel opens, witnesses the bizarre suicide of a New Orleans attorney. Just before he dies, the lawyer tells Mark a deadly secret concerning the recent murder of a Louisiana Senator, whose accused killer, Mafia thug Barry Muldanno, is about to go to trial. The police, the federal prosecutor and the FBI pressure Mark to tell them the attorney's last words, but he knows that with the mob watching his every move, revealing his secret will almost surely get him killed. So Mark, streetwise and old beyond his years, hires a lawyer: Reggie Love, a fifty-two-year-old divorcee who's been through more than anyone could imagine and survived, basically, because she's tough. And feisty. And loves helping kids overlooked or abused by the system. But when Mark's life is threatened, and Reggie discovers her office has been bugged, and even the Juvenile Court judge says Mark has no choice but to talk, she realizes that this time she's in way over her head. But then Mark comes up with a plan ... a crazy plan, in Reggie's opinion, but it's their only hope. And it just might work. With the page-turning suspense and terrific plot twists that have become John Grisham's trademark, he has once again crafted a novel that simply cannot be put down. But in The Client Grisham has gone a step further - with a cast of unforgettable characters headed by the most original hero in years, he has mixed equal parts humor and warmth to truly expand the boundaries of the legal thriller.