Not all books with a child as the main character are kids’ books. Especially when the central kid witnesses a gruesome suicide right off the bat and then plays games with the FBI for fear that his own life is in danger from the Mafia. You know, John Grisham could write a sequel to this called “The Client” where this kid is in therapy the rest of his life…
The Client
Author: John Grisham
Format: Audiobook
Length: 14 hours (approx)
Read by: Blair Brown
Originally Published: March 1, 1993
Original Publisher: Doubleday Books
View on Goodreads
Date Completed: March 19, 2024
My rating: 
Thoughts
The book centers around 11-year-old Mark Sway, who happens across a man about to commit suicide by carbon monoxide poisoning himself in his car. Before the man dies, he tells Mark where to find the body of a U.S. Senator, killed by a Mafia member. As a premise, this is intriguing right off the bat. Like, how ruined is this kid going to be after this? My guess – a lot.
Mark is a smart kid and watches a lot of TV and had seen The Godfather multiple times. So he’s rightfully afraid of the Mafia, but he also has a major distrust of law enforcement. He doesn’t believe that the FBI could keep his family safe, even if they went into witness protection.
So Mark does what any 11-year-old would do… he hires a lawyer… Yep. Oh, and he finds her in the Yellow Pages. So there’s that too. I’m 30 years older than Mark and I’ve never hired an attorney. But okay. We’ll chalk all that up to serendipity.
The characters in this book are really well-defined and consistent throughout. I mean, it’s John Grisham, so you kind of expect it. But a novel with an 11-year-old, a boy, a mere child, as its main character seems like it wouldn’t hold a reader’s attention for very long. But this boy, Mark, is the definition of precocious. He manages to handle situations better than some adults would.
Reggie Love (probably should have workshopped that name a little more) is another really great character in this book. She is resistant to working with Mark at first, but once he pays her that dollar and has the client-attorney privilege, she works to protect him as best as she’s able.
The book is pretty long (again, it’s Grisham), but the story never really slows down. I don’t think there were many parts that the book would have been better without.
As for the audiobook edition of this, I thought it was great. The narrator, Blair Brown, did a great job with the voices and the pacing. I would definitely listen to other audiobooks narrated by him in the future.
Overall, I gave this one 4 out of 5 stars. It was entertaining and had all the elements I like in a thriller, however unbelievable some of the aspects of the story may have been.
