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:''For the film of the same title, please see The Firm (1993 film)''
'''The Firm''' is a 1991 legal thriller and the second novel by John Grisham. It was his first widely recognized piece of work, and in 1993, was made into a film starring Tom Cruise. Grisham's first novel, ''A Time to Kill'', was successful but did not bring the author the attention of the general public.

Contents

Plot summary

Critical reception

References

Plot summary

The novel focuses on Mitch McDeere, graduated third in his class at Harvard Law School. Mitch is married to his girlfriend from college, Abby. Mitch's brother Ray is serving a prison term. His other brother, Rusty, died in Vietnam.
Mitch has offers from law firms in New York and Chicago but is seduced by a promise of a large salary, a house, and a BMW from a small law firm that contacts him from Memphis.
Two of Mitch's colleagues die in a scuba diving accident in the Cayman Islands the week he starts at the firm. Mitch finds the deaths unsettling, but continues to work very hard, faced with the prospect of becoming a partner after only a few years. Then, an FBI agent, Wayne Tarrance, confronts Mitch, and Mitch learns gradually that the Firm is actually a cover for the Mafia. They have a system in which new lawyers from poor backgrounds are successfully lured into the firm with promises of secure wealth. By the time a lawyer knows its actual operations, he cannot leave. No lawyer has actually quit the firm alive. Mitch learns that his house, office and his car are bugged. He and Abby are also routinely followed, making his meetings with the FBI dangerous.
Desperate to find a way out and stay alive in the process, Mitch makes a deal with the FBI, in which he gets two million dollars and the release of his brother, but only if he collects enough evidence to indict the members of the firm.
Meanwhile, the firm becomes suspicious, and with the assistance of a mole in the FBI, they discover Mitch's plan. Once Mitch learns of this, he runs from both the police and Mafia, taking his wife and his now-released brother with him. He then proceeds to steal approximately ten million dollars from various bank accounts belonging to the firm.
Mitch manages to escape to the Caribbean, while the FBI gets the evidence they need to bust the firm. At the end, Mitch and his family are shown quietly enjoying their newfound wealth in the Caribbean region.

Critical reception

Marilyn Stasio from the New York Times (March 24, 1991) comments that "''Mr. Grisham, a criminal defense attorney, writes with such relish about the firm's devious legal practices that his novel might be taken as a how-to manual for ambitious tax-law students.''" ^[1]

References

1.