About the Author

John Grisham as a child dreamed of being a professional baseball player. After graduating from law school at Ole Miss in 1981, he went on to practice law for nearly a decade, specializing in criminal defense and personal injury litigation. One day, Grisham overheard the harrowing testimony of a twelve-year-old rape victim and was inspired to start a novel exploring what would have happened if the girl's father had murdered her assailants. Getting up at 5 a.m. every day to get in several hours of writing time before heading off to work, Grisham spent three years on A Time to Kill and finished it in 1987.His next novel, The Firm, spent 47 weeks on The New York Times bestseller list and became the bestselling novel of 1991. Since then, he has written one novel a year, including The Client, The Pelican Brief, The Rainmaker and The Runaway Jury. Today, Grisham has written a collection of stories, a work of nonfiction, three sports novels, four kids' books, and many legal thrillers. His work has been translated into 42 languages. He lives near Charlottesville, Virginia.

Reviews

[T]his is not a story about a triumph or a miscarriage of courtroom justice. It's the more devious, surprising story of a smart man who gets even smarter once he spends five years honing his skills as a jailhouse lawyer -- and then expertly concocts an ingenious revenge scheme... Mr. Grisham writes with rekindled vigor here. - New York Times on The RacketeerGrisham introduces a small-town Virginia lawyer named Malcolm Bannister, who's dubiously convicted of money laundering for a drug-lord client, and maps out a revenge plot from his federal penitentiary cell that's twice as elaborate as the one Alexandre Dumas cooked up in The Count of Monte Cristo. Like many a Grisham hero, Mal is a legal insider who knows how to work the system to his advantage. He's also a peculiarly lone wolf, willing to shed all his family ties in pursuit of a very long and entertaining con. - Entertainment Weekly on The RacketeerElectrifying... carries the reader along one track (innocent man seeks exoneration) only to switch on to another (cat-and-mouse caper) halfway through with delicious, frictionless ease. - The Guardian on The Racketeer