The Street Lawyer - John Grisham

I've just finished the third Grisham novel. I had known the author's name for a long time but it took me an equally long time until I opened one of his novels. The reason was that what I knew was a) He's an extremely successful writer b) He isn't known for his literary excellence b) He writes thick books. Something got muddled in my mind and I mixed him up with the authors Dan Brown and Terry Pratchett* for whom the same can be said. Pseudo-religious mystery? Bah! Sci-Fi? Double bah! But then an acquaintance forced The Partner on me and told me categorically, "Read it. You'll like it." I did ... more

The next book on my trip through my John Grisham shelf of my Bookcase is The Street Lawyer. I know a lot of people will be thinking I only have Grisham books on my shelf and it certainly seems that way to me. His books make up just under half of my collection of fiction works and although one of his recent works didn’t fill me with the same desire to read, the older ones such as this certainly did. Grisham, a former lawyer has made a very good living out of writing Novels, since his debut effort A Time To Kill. Despite his move away from practising law he writes his books on the subject ... more

The Street Lawyer John Grisham As some my regular readers (I wish…) will know, I am a John Grisham fan and am currently reading and reviewing all of his books. As with all Grisham books, this is based around the law and lawyers. The Street Lawyer, as the name suggests, deals with a lawyer who works the street. In this sense, I mean in an office helping the homeless - not ambulance chasers. The Characters John Grisham has always been good at character building and this gives the reader a good insight into every detail. By the middle of the book, you feel as if you know them. This is good ... more

The main character in this one is Michael. He is a lawyer earning a lot of money at a massive law firm in Washington, DC. However, a homeless man takes him hostage one day. He and his fellow lawyers survive the incident, but their assailant is not so lucky, killed and buried in a pauper’s grave. This shocks Michael greatly. He digs into the man's past and discovers a dirty secret, relating to the law firm where he works. The ladder that he was climbing collapses and Michael flees the firm, taking a secret file with him. He lives on the streets, becoming the eponymous street lawyer, but ... more

What really gives this story its power, is the way the writer forcefully brings the homeless up to the same 'level' as so-called middle and upper-class society. The lead character's apparent fall from high society to the lowly depths of street life, and the way he gradually begins to realise and accept that the homeless are human too, touches something deep inside the reader's soul. The story centres around a case involving seventeen homeless people who are wrongfully evicted from the building where they were staying, resulting in several of the evictees dying of exposure on the streets. The ... more