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Book Reviews Title The
Brethren Fiction-Net
Rating Buy It
From Amazon.co.uk - BUY
NOW! Cover
Story Trumble is a
minimum-security federal prison, home to the usual
assortment of relatively harmless criminals - drug
dealers, bank robbers, swindlers, embezzlers, tax
evaders, and three former judges who call
themselves The Brethren. They meet each day in the
law library where they handle cases for other
inmates, practice law without a licence, and
sometimes dispense jailhouse justice. And they
spend hours writing letters. They are fine-tuning a
mail scam, and it's starting to really work. The
money is pouring in. Then their little
scam goes awry. It ensnares the wrong victim, a
powerful man on the outside, a man with dangerous
friends, and The Brethren's days of quietly marking
their time are over. We
Say The only
surprising thing about 'The Brethren' by John
Grisham is the lack of any surprises at all. It's
been a while since I've read any Grisham novels as
I 'd previously given up the habit. I began to find
them all going down the same well-trodden path i.e.
you've read one and you've read them all. Still,
there was a certain amount of enjoyment to be had
from these earlier novels. They were full of sharp,
sassy young lawyers battling against age-old webs
of corruption. Quite often there was a major
emotional pull - usually something to do with the
fate of a child or the right of 'the little guy' to
stand up to a big evil corporation. These kinds of
things may be a cliché but at least they
work. The biggest problem with 'The Brethren' is
that there is no one to really care about - there
isn't any big-hearted 'little guy' to root for. The
three judges in prison are a bunch of seedy old men
and the lawyer that helps them on the outside is an
alcoholic waste of space. As for the
man-who-would-be-president - he has something to
fear from the three judges but he doesn't even know
that because it is kept from him. The cold and
efficient head of the CIA is secretly pulling
strings behind his back. Feeling emotionally
involved yet? Thought not. I guess what
we're meant to care about is the fact that if
the-man-who-would-be-president doesn't get to be
president, there are defence implications and the
chance of a war, as foreseen by our all-knowing
friend at the CIA. Unfortunately, it's all dealt
with in blasé fashion by Grisham and the
reader is left with very little to convince them of
any real threat. One final whinge
- there are absolutely no significant women in this
book. This is a one-dimensional and tired
representation of corruption and politics. I'd been
hoping that a spectacular ending might make up for
the weakness of the rest of the story. Even in
that, I was disappointed. The ending just petered
out with nothing of any real consequence occurring.
My advice? Don't bother. Review by: Rachel
Taylor |
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