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The Street Lawyer (John Grisham)
by John Grisham (Reader: Frank Muller)
Product Group: Book
Publisher: Random House Audio (1998-02-04)
ISBN: 0553502123
EAN: 9780553502121
Dewey Decimal #: 813.54
Binding/Media: Audio Cassette
Edition: Unabridged
Release Date: 1998-02-04
SKU: 00-6DFH-0FFB
Condition: New
Comments: Brand new item. Still sealed in original wrapper.
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Editorial Reviews
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Product Description
Michael was in a hurry. He was scrambling up the ladder at Drake & Sweeney, a giant D.C. firm with eight hundred lawyers. The money was good and getting better; a partnership was three years away. He was a rising star with no time to waste, no time to stop, no time to toss a few coins into the cups of panhandlers. No time for a conscience.But a violent encounter with a homeless man stopped him cold. Michael survived; his assailant did not. Who was this man? Michael did some digging, and learned that he was a mentally ill veteran who'd been in and out of shelters for many years. Then Michael dug a little deeper, and found a dirty secret, and the secret involved Drake & Sweeney. The fast track derailed; the ladder collapsed. Michael bolted from the firm and took a top-secret file with him. He landed in the streets, an advocate for the homeless, a street lawyer. And a thief.
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Amazon.com Review
Award-winning narrator Frank Muller delivers a poignant and candid reading in this unabridged courtroom drama. Muller's first-person delivery embraces Michael Brock's complexities as he grapples with a burgeoning conscience. With Brock's revelation that "I am a human first, then a lawyer," he is transformed from a rigid middle-class male into a compassionate Robin Hood-like character. Muller flawlessly interchanges voices and gives a powerful delivery worthy of character who heroically sacrifices everything to become an advocate for the homeless. (Running time: 11 hours, 12 cassettes) --Gina Kaysen
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Customer Reviews
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Grisham is a master craftsman, VERY BAD STORY THOUGH
Rating  (2)
Date: 2010-07-28
Grisham might be the best genre writer of our time. I say this because when you read his words, its pretty obvious that he has a genius for putting together simple sentences to form a sense of urgency. This urgency is what makes suspense tick, and page by page, the suspense is there... even if obscured by just a horrible story.
The street lawyer is one of the most condescending bits of tripe that I have ever read. Here is a billionaire (or close to it) writer (Grisham), writing about homelessness and the hypocrisy of the wealthy.
This is a story about 'redemption'... A Dickens style fable where the protagonist 'Michael' finds truth & purpose while helping squatters fight the system. Mostly, whats worse, is the superior liberal stance (and I, myself am a liberal) Grisham takes here.
This is a bad story. Id recommend staying away from it.
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boo
Rating  (1)
Date: 2010-07-03
this is one of his worst. along with his non fiction book innocent man this was nothing more than a political statement. a time to kill is by far his best
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street lawyer
Rating  (5)
Date: 2010-06-22
this book kept your interst from the start to the end. hard to put it down and the ending out of this world.
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A Wake-up Call About the Poor and the Homeless
Rating (5)
Date: 2010-03-23
3 out of 3 customers found this reveiw helpful
Attorney Michael Brock is a thirty-two-year-old Yale graduate, who will soon become a partner at the high powered Washington, D.C. law firm of Drake & Sweeney, where he will earn close to a million dollars a year and bonuses. He works eighty hours a week minimum and is climbing the ladder of success.
Then one day a homeless man walks into the firm and takes some of its attorneys hostage. He not only has a gun, but a bundle of what looks like dynamite taped to his body and he laments that people like them walk right by him on the street, ignoring the poor and the homeless, and he demands they call him, Mister. Then he demands their tax records. He wants to check their charitable contributions.
Mister meets a violent end, but the experience transforms Michael and his attempts to find out what motivated the man lead him to a world of soup kitchens, squatters, homeless shelters and a legal clinic where there are no million-dollar salaries.
His guide to the world of the homeless is Mordecai Green, a firebrand in his early 50s who represents the poorest of the poor. He educates Michael and the reader about the elimination of low-cost housing and the trend in America to turn the homeless into criminals. It's not long before Green offers Michael a job and he accepts, becoming, you guessed it, "The Street Lawyer."
Michael starts up in Green's clinic working on hundreds of cases, while preparing a lawsuit against his old firm. This is hard work and things start to get complicated when Michael realizes that a Drake & Sweeney file he has shows that his old firm had been guilty of wrongful eviction. This adds a very nice twist to the tale.
Though this book is sort of a wake-up call to America about the plight of the homeless, it's first and foremost a John Grisham legal thriller, and as such you can expect a corporate conspiracy and a cover-up with our hero's life and livelihood on the line. You can also expect expertly drawn characters who you can easily identify with and non-stop Grisham suspense. I think everyone should read this book.
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This book is about redemption. It is gritty. It is humane. Good triumphs over evil, finally.
Rating (5)
Date: 2010-01-16
1 out of 1 customers found this reveiw helpful
The Street Lawyer is a book about a character named Michael Brock, who quits his job, loses his trophy wife, and strives to do the right thing. His life of excess is redeemed in his new-found dedication to serving others. I found the story full of action and suspense, and Brock's character is likeable and realistically complicated and in conflict with himself. The story includes some litigational maneuvers that lead to the ultimate success of Brock's lawsuit. The story depicts life on the street as dirty, dangerous, sad, and just plain gritty. The book is unquestionably a good read, and I found it worth more than Grisham's other excellent works of fiction because the story has consequences. As you read the book, you wonder what you would have done in the situations that Brock finds himself in. And when you realize that you probably wouldn't act as selfless as Brock, you learn something about yourself and the way you interact with other people. Typical legal thrillers (like most of Grisham's other books) won't affect you personally the way this book will.
I browsed some of the negative reviews written about this book, and they typically come in two categories: (1) readers didn't like the story because it wasn't like Grisham's other works, (2) readers didn't like the story because it was "preachy" and they found it hard to believe that a person could turn his back on material affluence and start a new life to help the homeless. The people in the first category were understandably surprised that this was not a typical Grisham novel. The people in the second category are exactly the people for whom Grisham was writing this book. They should read the book again because they have something more to learn from the story. In real life, there actually are people who dedicate their lives to serving others. I'm not calling for everyone to be like Michael Brock. But wouldn't society be better for all if more people were as selfless?
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