This book is an ignorant, biased view of a brief time period of the Latter Day Saints and their religious ways. I found the text to be abhorible, and was unable to complete the third chapter. I would highly suggest you not purchase this abomination, as it is a waste of paper and ink. I am glad that I only borrowed this book, and never conceived the dememnted thought of acquiring it from my local bookstore.

This is not a warm fuzzy, feel good, faith promoting book. It is a fair, objective, social science aproach to the LDS church.

Mauss does a nice job of illuminating the origins of a trend many of us in the church have noticed in the last few decades. He shows how the right-wing, anti-intellectuals have no greater doctrinal support than others, but how they have seized control of many outlets that make their version of Mormonism seem normative.

I enjoyed the book, if only because of its brevity. Due to that brevity, however, some fairly serious flaws develop. Unfortunately, these flaws make the plot totally non-plausible.

Character development is virtually non-existent. As a result, the main character's decision to leave "the firm" is not as strong as it could have been. Additionally, you don't get the feeling that the other lawyers from Drake & Sweeney (with the exception of Chance) are the antagonists that Mr. Grisham makes them out to be.

Lastly, the conclusion seemed to be too nicely wrapped. The reader is thus left with a type of literary twinkie: something's just gone through you, you're not sure what it was, and you're left with an empty feeling.

To his credit, Mr. Grisham takes on a difficult subject. It is difficult to make a compelling story about the homeless and the lawyers that help them. It wasn't as "holier-than-thou" as I expected, although there was a fair amount of that (both implicity and explicitly stated).

All in all, a decent book. Not one of his best, though.

The book starts GREAT, as our narrator, an up-and-coming attorney in a high-powered DC firm, is taken hostage along with some co-workers, by a homeless man. The scene is tense and grabs your attention right away.

After the violent conclusion to his scenario, our hero begins to reasses his priorities, and quickly decides to abandon his firm and begin life as a "street lawyer." This involves filing for divorce, giving up a huge salary, filing suit against his former firm, stealing files, etc. etc. The protagonists life spins quickly out of control, but Grisham doesn't build much tension around these events. Even as we see his life coming apart, Grisham lays right down in front of us the different ways our hero will be able to bounce back again.

Grisham mostly uses the book to preach to the reader. No matter how you feel about the issues Grisham espouses, there is no denying that the QUANTITY of preaching slows the progress of the book.

Much like THE RUNAWAY JURY, Grisham fails to ever make us believe that our heros might fail in their quest. Grisham is a competent writer, nice and breezy, and when he isn't preaching, his prose zooms along. However, a bit more DRAMA is called for too!

Book Review: John Grisham is known for writing action filled legal novels. The Street Lawyer is his ninth, and most recent novel, which fits that category quite well. It's suspenseful plot and fast pace mix well with the emotional and legal themes presented. Grisham ties these diverse aspects of the main character, Michael Brock's life together in an interesting and understandable way. Instead of beginning with background information about the main characters, and the usual slow moving start, Grisham begins with a hostage situation which takes place and is resolved within the first twenty pages. As the plot goes on the reader finds out more and more about the characters. But it is done in a smooth, flowing way. Much unlike the style of James Joyce, where you are thrown into the middle of a character's life and left confused and uninformed (or at least I was). The hostage situation in the first chapter is resolved by the sniping of the captor, a homeless man who seems to have no intentions of harming anyone. He just wants to grab the attention of a few rich lawyers for long enough to let them know how much they have and how little they share with the needy. After hearing the vagabond's pleas and seeing him killed Michael Brock contemplates leaving his prestigious law firm, Drake & Sweeny, to pursue a career in street law, defending the poor and homeless. At the same time he has to face the fact that his relationship with his wife, Claire, is deteriorating and near an end. Finding a file containing a list of names of people who were illegally evicted from an apartment building, including the name of the bum who held Michael hostage and a family who dies during a snowstorm , helps him make his decision to leave the firm and go into public-interest law. Michiko Kakutani, of The New York Times, has a very different opinion on The Street Lawyer. He feels that Grisham is predictable and lacks talent. He stated that "Mr. Grisham has never been particularly good at creating characters with any real emotional depth,"(Kakutani 1-2) I feel that Michael Brock displays an emotional side that is realistic as well as the struggle that he goes through between pursuing happiness through money, power and material things or through using his knowledge and talent to help others as well as satisfy himself. His decision may not seem very realistic in today's society but his struggle and confusion are definitely realistic. And there must be some people who really do chose to follow their giving, unselfish side otherwise the world would be in a lot worse shape than it is. I had never read a John Grisham novel before The Street Lawyer. I had seen the movie versions of The Pelican Brief, The Firm and A Time To Kill, and enjoyed them all, so I expected to enjoy his writing and I did. It isn't a very challenging read but it is a good book to relax and be entertained by, and if they come out with a movie I will definitely see it. Works Cited: Grisham, John. The Street Lawyer. New York: Doubleday,1998. Kakutani, Michiko. A Lawyer Converts To Virtue .The New York Times,10 Feb.1998,late ed.