The Brethren: A Novel

Quirky and fun illegal fairytale about extortion. Two disgraced former judges and a conniving former justice of the peace manage to wreck havoc on a presidential campaign from the comfort of their minimum security prison in Florida. The storyline is fraught with twist, turns and machinations pitting the three prisoners' schemes (with assistance from an inept and boozy lawyer) against the all powerful head wizard of the CIA. A bit of creative license is sprinkled throughout the pages, but it does leaving one wondering whether Mr. Grisham simply has an incredible gift for storytelling or does he know more about governmental hankie-pankie than he'll admit. Hmmmm. Four stars for a bit of tedium and redundancy and a few "what happened to" characters, but overall a very enjoyable book.

Lots of interesting items about the legal system.

The concept of 3 federal prisoners convicted of non violent crimes such as fraud money laundering setting up a court of law within the prison and using their criminal history to manage a scam from prison is so novel.

Even granting that John Grisham is a genre unto himself, his latest tale of crooked judges, attorneys and politicians and their hapless victims is not up to his usual standard. While "The Bretheren" is distinguished by the same shallow insights, stereotyped characters, cliched descriptions ("tell, don't show" apparently is Grisham's guiding stylistic principle), and plot summaries that characterize most if not all of Grisham's work, in this case, the characters are even more banal and thinly-sketched than usual, while the plot is a hackneyed blackmail scenario married to a Grisham-version of "the Manchurian Candidate." Nor does Grisham provide any "good guys" to provide a narrative or psychological counterpoint to the three incarcerated judges whose blackmail scheme intersects with the CIA's own plan to employ illegal campaign financing and orchestrated overseas terrorism to elect a presidential candidate that will serve its own political ends: the only "heros" in this story are the hurriedly described, quickly-disposed of gay victims of the three blackmailers and an equally insubstantial, wrongly-imprisoned boat-builder. While the world may indeed be as grim as all that, Grisham's novels, lacking psychological depth or narrative complexity, must rely on the struggle between good and evil to sustain the reader's interest. In this case we have a mere catalogue of bad guys who behave badly, and a poorly-drawn,uninspired one at that.Indeed, one gets the impression that Grisham had no fun writing this novel and that, having contracted to produce a book a year, he is merely, and grimly "churning 'em out". This is a shame, because some of his work -- "The Runaway Jury," and "The Rainmaker," e.g. -- is actually not bad. Maybe the answer is to take his profits, buy out his contract and, following his characters' fantasies, remove himself to a Caribbean Island, where he can write what he wants, at his leisure.

Classic Grisham; intriguing story, well wrought characters. I was surprised by the ending because it left things up in the air. I won’t be surprised to find there’s a sequel.

The Brethren kept me guessing. Intrigue and smart strategies weaved throughout. The brethren are no heroes but they managed to hold their own with the inner workings of the Feds. Unexpected twists and turns throughout.

First I am an older woman who grew up reading Sherlock Holmes and Agatha Christy and other mystery writers of the 50's, 60's and 70's. Then along came "thrillers" and "legal thrillers" of Grisham, Paterson and others and I am one happy lady.I particularly like Grisham's style and have read almost everything he's written. I even like the way he ends the books. Now, about The Brethren.After picking up a paperback copy of the book and reading a little at a time, I slowly but surely became hooked on the story. By accident my daughter picked up the book and became so engrossed in it that I let her take it home and purchased the book for my Kindle. From about Chap 5 to the end I could not put it down and read straight through to the early morning light.As for getting "connected" to the characters, well for me it wasn't all that necessary as all I wanted was to read about was who they were, what they did, why they did it and how was it all gonna end up, although I must say, I really liked all of the characters (the good guys and the bad guys). For my simple mind, it wasn't disappointing and I enjoyed it from beginning to the usual John Grisham end. So. If you like John Grisham(even just a little) and/or legal thrilers I recommend this book.

My fifth book by John Grisham. A thrilling and compelling read. So many twist and turns but enjoyable all the same. Couldn't put it down.

This one is good, very good, as Grisham entwines two distinct and initially separate subplots in a complex web of double deception. The first storyline being of a group of former, now imprisoned judges who are running a blackmail scheme targeting closet gay men; the second is the tale of the cynical manipulation of the American election primaries by the director of CIA to have his chosen candidate, a little known squeaky clean congressman, win the nomination; no spoilers her but more details are available in the Amazon review.Of course you know that at some point these two strands are going to become entwined and half of the suspense comes from waiting for the "how-and-when's-it-going-to-happen" factor and the other half from the "now-it's-happened-how's-Grisham-going-to-resolve-this-with-a-win-win" factor. Sure there are a couple of questionable coincidences and incredulous improbabilities but it's a story, but Grisham's use of a genuinely plausible human error to link the strands is very clever.As ever with Grisham it's well written and the characters, good and bad, are well developed but note though that anyone looking for Grisham's trade-mark legal insider knowledge maybe be disappointed, the blackmailers maybe former judges but that's just a convenient hook rather than an essential element of the story. The real strength of this book lies in the intrigue that Grisham conjures in his storytelling.

For the first half of The Brethren, we follow two quite separate tales: - Trumble is a minimum security federal prison. Three ex-judges are running a mail scam with the help of their mediocre lawyer - CIA director Teddy Maynard plots to subvert to Presidential election with a handpicked candidate, Congressman Aaron Lake, to promote his own agendaEventually, the two worlds must collide, and when they do it is not, in my opinion, entirely unexpected as to why. However, that does not actually bother me in this case - it is how this collision is handled that makes the book so readable. The last quarter of the book outlines how the two groups come to a mutually agreeable conclusion, and it comes as a bit of a surprise the route that Maynard takes, but in a good way.There is a sinister side to the Maynard character, and his final meeting with Lake only adds to the darkness that is the political background. Maynard's plotting reminded me, in some ways, of the TV series Scandal - a secretive intelligence organisation 'decides' who will be the next president.The characters are well developed, and two of the judges are portrayed with a degree of sympathy, especially when a harshly convicted 'drug trader' appears for a brief cameo. The third is suitably disagreeable, and their lawyer whilst well developed is similarly an unsympathetic character. I was certainly hoping for the best for two of the judges.This is one of Grisham's better books. His cynical review of both politics and the justice system - one of the judges begins to rethink some of his decisions - seems very apt in today's world, even though this book is quite old. Overall a good 4 stars, close to a 5.

The ending of this novel left me quite unsatisfied. One, the author repeated sentences that made me roll my eyes and remark, 'Yes, I know this you've already stated'. There was a character at the beginning of the book who I expected to return later with a huge, 'WOW I didn't see that coming' But that didn't happen, that character vanished. I was not wowed at who 'Al' really was, I was not gasping and not saying 'Oh my god! No way!' I was expecting that, to be honest - was kinda obvious. But the finale, wow. It was almost as though the author couldn't be bothered any longer and chose the easy way out. 'What the hell?' I thought. 'Is that it?' Though I did enjoy the scheming and cunning of the three major characters how they went about picking their victims and the letters they wrote - I enjoyed those chapters.

Having never read a Grisham book until last year I’m now ploughing through them at a rate of knots! Just don’t know why I didn’t get into him earlier.They’ve all been 5-star.....until The Brethren. It lacks the intense drama I’ve come to expect, too many of the characters are difficult to relate to, and there are too many leading characters, so it’s not an easy book to follow easily. Also, the plot is a bit dull.

Quite a disturbing but fascinating story very related to the world we live in today. It did get a bit confusing during the set-up stages but pulled together wonderfully as John Grisham always does. Probably frighteningly close to reality.