FIRM, THE

Hard to believe, but there was a time when the word "lawyer"wasn't synonymous with "criminal," and the idea of a law firmcontrolled by the Mafia was an outlandish proposition. Thisintelligent, ensnaring story came out of nowhere--Oxford,Mississippi, where Grisham was a small-town lawyer--and quicklycatapulted to the top of the bestseller list, with good reason.Mitch McDeere, the appealing hero, is a poor kid whose only assetsare a first-class mind, a Harvard law degree, and a beautiful,loving wife. When a Memphis law firm makes him an offer he reallycan't refuse, he trades his old Nissan for a new BMW, his crampedapartment for a house in the best part of town, and puts in longhours finding tax shelters for Texans who'd rather pay a lawyerthan the IRS. Nothing criminal about that. He'd be set for life, ifonly associates at the firm didn't have a funny habit of dying, andthe FBI wasn't trying to get Mitch to turn his colleagues in. Thetempo and pacing are brilliant, the thrills keep coming, and thefinish has a wonderful ironic flourish. It's not hard to see whyGrisham changed the genre permanently with this one, and few of hiscolleagues in a very crowded field come close to equaling him.--Jane Adams