The Pelican Brief is not my favorite John Grisham audiobook. I like his stories about young, hotshot lawyers going up against multi-million dollar insurance companies and things like that. Instead, The Pelican Brief is about a law student who has to go on the run after inadvertently identifying the guilty parties in a high-profile assassination. It’s not a bad story idea, but I don’t think Grisham pulled it off.The law student, Darby Shaw, is primarily interested in constitutional law, and therefore takes notice when two supreme-court justices are murdered. I can believe that. Darby is not just smart, she is very smart, so she studies the cases that the two justices have ruled on recently, as well as cases that are coming up soon, and cross references that data with people who might want to change the outcomes of those cases. She writes this all up in a report, one of her teachers hands it off to a friend of his who works for the FBI, and the next thing you know, the teacher is dead and Darby is running for her life. This is the stuff that action-thrillers are made of, and I’m down with it.It’s downhill from there. Darby stays alive because the professional assassins, who took out two supreme-court justices, are too stupid to track her down. Darby is smart so she does a lot of things right: she doesn’t go home, she changes hotels every other day, buys new clothes just as frequently, and cuts and colors her hair. Grisham explained that she has a lot of money from an inheritance, so that’s okay, but she goes around using her credit cards, which any idiot would know not to do. She eventually realizes her mistake and starts using cash, but drawing cash from a bank would leave a trail just as surely as using credit cards. Still, the killers can’t seem to find her. At one point they are examining a photo of Darby sporting her new hairdo, and I couldn’t help but wonder why they could shoot her with a camera so easily, but not with a gun.I dunno, maybe I’m just over-analyzing, but I don’t like books where the hero stays alive only because the bad guys are stupid. I’ve read a few John Grisham novels, and I know he can do better than this.I wasn’t very impressed with Alexander Adams’ narration of The Pelican Brief. He left unusually long pauses between sentences, and he just never developed any kind of rhythm or flow. The overall effect was a stilted and unnatural reading. Adams does try to use different voices for the characters and I give him credit for that, but again they just sound unnatural and awkward. I looked around at Audible and found some different recordings of this audiobook, so I would recommend trying one with a different narrator. The Pelican Brief isn’t a bad audiobook, but it’s definitely not Grisham’s best work. Couple that with a mediocre narration and I would have to say try some of Grisham’s other audiobooks before attempting this one.Steven Brandt @ Audiobook-Heaven
I recently re-read The Pelican Brief. Also known as John Grisham’s love letter to Julia Roberts. (He wrote the character of Darby Shaw with Julia Roberts in mind). Did he write the character of Gray Grantham with Denzel Washington in mind? Methinks probably not.You probably know the plot - two Supreme Court justices get knocked off. A Tulane University student named Darby Shaw comes up with a theory as to who is responsible for the killings. She's spot on, and has to go on the run to save her own life. She is assisted by a Washington Post writer by the name of Gray Grantham as they try to find sources to back up her brief and expose the bad guys before they can snuff her out.It's probably my favorite Grisham novel. The Client and The Firm are the only ones in the same class in my opinion. It was written in the early 1990s, before he became uber-preachy.I hadn't read this since probably about 1992, but I have seen the movie about five times in between, so it was kind of fun in that respect to see some of the differences.It has been a few months since I finished, so I'm having trouble remembering what a lot of them were. You do get more of a sense of Darby's paranoia in the book. You also get more of a sense that Gray Grantham had it BAD for Darby. He goes on and on and on about how great her legs are.Anyways, it's a good read. The movie is pretty good too.
What do You think about The Pelican Brief (2006)?
When two Supreme Court justices are assassinated on the same night, there is plenty of speculation as to who the assassin or assassins are and why the judges were murdered. Like many others, law student Darby Shaw thinks she knows the motive. She writes a brief, soon to be known as The Pelican Brief, and shows it to her law professor/lover, Thomas Callahan. Unfortunately, he shows it to a friend of his who works for the FBI, who passes it along, and it falls into the wrong hands. When Callahan is killed by a car bomb, Darby realizes someone wants her dead and she goes on the run. She hooks up with Washington Post reporter Gray Grantham and the two of them try to stay alive long enough to expose the truth. This was an exciting but implausible thriller. Darby is a well-written character and it's nice to read a book with a strong, intelligent heroine. Unfortunately, it's not clear until well into the book what Darby's feelings for Callahan really were, it should have been clear earlier that she loved him and was not a student having an affair with a professor in order to get an A. She conveniently has plenty of money, so she can use cash on the run, rather than leave a trail by using plastic. And it strains readers credibility that a law student can outwit trained assassins. Some of the other characters in the book blend into each other and I wasn't always clear as to who some of them were. Grisham does clear up some loose ends, but at the last minute, as if he suddenly remembered them. Despite these flaws, the story is exciting enough to keep the reader turning pages and worth reading as long as you don't think too much about it.
—Drebbles
This book kept my interest, page after page.The story is different, in fact,very different from normal storylines in most of the books out there on the market. It is refreshing and interesting because it shows how one ordinary lady, Darby Shaw, can come up with a solution that all the experts could not think of. Even after two justices are killed without a trace of evidence, she decides to uncover the killer. Then, when her brief is handed over to the FBI, the agent dies two days later in Darby's place.Once, she realizes that the killers are after her, she knows that she must stay one step ahead of them, so she doesn't stay in one place for two nights. During these chapters the book is thrilling when Darby is being chased, and each time you think this is her last day on Earth she escapes death.In my opinion, Grisham, wrote a trilling, legal mystery that will keep your interest from the first page to the last page. Enjoy, I highly recommend this book.
—Connie
This book was a lot more suspenseful and entertaining than I thought it would be. I don't know why I thought it would be so boring, since John Grisham is so popular. It was incredibly suspenseful at parts. It was the first book I'd read by Grisham, so I really didn't know what was coming. I had three problems with it: 1) Although, like I said, the book as a whole was really suspenseful, I thought the end was a bit anticlimatic. 2) The environmentalism was a bit heavy handed. I'm all about preserving the environment, but I don't like being hit over the head by it. Darby could get a bit preachy at times. 3) I didn't think that Darby was a very good characterization. She didn't feel real. Towards the end she said something like, "It's not fair; we used my brains, looks, and legs, and you get all the glory." Despite whatever Grisham's fantasies may be, women do not talk like that, nor do they obsess over their legs and toenails as much as Darby did, and if they do, everyone hates them. But all in all it was a great book.
—Kiersten
