The Brethren

"The Brethren", by John Grisham, is about a group of three disgraced judges doing time in a minimum-security prison in Florida. They hold a type of court session every so often where they settle petty arguments and other small problems inside the prisons cafeteria. The three judges call themselves the brethren and all their decisions were final. Throughout the book they deal with all sorts of small arguments were they handle these situations and the book kind of sidetracks into these other small stories. Outside of the walls of the prison there is a weird presidential election were a smalltime politician is approached by a political party that tells him that they can guarantee him the presidency if he agrees to cooperate. The way that he proposes to do this is a type of scare tactic. He tells the politician to campaign that would attack threats to our country and almost like a military campaign and that they would make him look like a visionary by make small attacks throughout the world to American embassies and he also tells him that money is no abject and that would take care of his entire campaign. The story also continues inside the prison as the brethren devise a way to extort money from unsuspecting victims on the outside. With the help of a lawyer of one of the judges and one of the guards at the prison they go about finding victims. They eventually find a victim.

Characters The main characters mainly consist of. The next is Joe Roy Spicer who is a country fellow and was sent to Trumble after serving his small town over the local courthouse as the Judge. He was well respected for his work until he was arrested for skimming bingo profits from a Shriners Club. The next judge from the brethren was Chief Justice of the California Supreme Court before he was sent to Trumble after being set up for tax evasion by the IRS. The third and final member of the brethren is Hatlee Beech who was a federal judge in Texas and had political ambitions but a drunken joyride with a young woman had ended all his hopes and got him locked up. Another very important character in the prison story is the brethrens blackmail victim who is named Quince Garber who is a very rich closeted homosexual who runs his fathers bank in a small town where his family is well known and respected. If that where to get out, his reputation would be destroyed and his father would disown him. The other two main characters come from the rigged presidential election they are young politician Aaron Lake and head of the CIA Teddy Maynard who is secretly running Lakes campaign and is responsible for the events that are taking place to help Aaron campaign

Theme/Genre

The true theme of this book so far isn't very clear to me and I am having trouble to find a dominating theme or genre to place this book under. If I were a person deciding were to place this type of book in a large library by order of themes or genres I would place it in the section for Thrillers and Mystery

Climax

The most intense and exciting part of the Trumble Prison part is when the brethren finally hook and begin two trap their blackmail victim Quince Garber. The way that they did this was by placing a classified article in a gay magazine looking for a partner and when Quince the rich young and closeted homosexual responds they got him hook line and sinker. The other very exciting part of the Presidential election section is when Maynard begins to make things happen and Aaron Lake begins to get campaign money from Defense execs and Arms producers who support his Hard fisted campaign to double the Defense budget

Recommendation

I would definitely recommend this book to someone who was looking to read a good book with a great story line and some good in depth reading which will catch and actually get you to not want to stop reading. Because it moves at such a fast pace it will not allow time for the story to become stagnate and have you waiting for something to happen. It will keep you interested and so far it's been a very captivating read

About The Author

John Grisham is the author of many Suspense and Mystery/Thriller book including, " A Time To Kill, "The Firm", "The Client", "The Chamber", "The Rainmaker", "The Partner", and some of his more famous books, "Runaway Jury", "The Pelican Brief", which were molded into movies. John Grisham was born in Arkansas in 1955 and received his law degree from Ole Miss in 1981. He specialized in criminal defense in his law practice. John began writing in 1984 and published his first novel "A Time to Kill" in 1988. It was released as a major motion picture in the summer of 1996.