The Client

This is Grisham at full throttle: a child caught between the FBI and the mob, with no adult he can fully trust. Read it for the engine of the plot — a secret too dangerous to keep and too dangerous to tell — and for Reggie Love, one of the genre's great underdog lawyers. Perfect for anyone who likes thrillers where the stakes are a kid's survival, not a courtroom verdict.

1. 1

   Act 1

   A Hose in the Exhaust Pipe

   Mark Sway is eleven, and his eight-year-old brother Ricky is smoking cigarettes with him in the woods near their trailer park in Memphis. Then they come upon a man attempting suicide in his car, running a hose from the exhaust pipe into the passenger compartment. Mark tries to pull the hose off, but the man grabs him and pulls him into the car. His name is Jerome Clifford, a New Orleans lawyer, drunk and drugged out of his mind. And he talks. He tells Mark he is killing himself because his client, Barry 'The Blade' Muldanno, will murder him for knowing where the body of Senator Boyd Boyette is buried — Muldanno has told him the location. 'I'm dead, kid. I'm a dead man. The Blade is gonna get me. He's gonna cut me up and feed me to the sharks.' Mark escapes the car, and moments later Clifford shoots himself in the head with a pistol. Ricky, who has been watching from outside, witnesses the suicide and goes into shock, becoming catatonic. The Sway family keeps vigil at Ricky's bedside. Mark tells the police and FBI a false story, claiming he and Ricky found Clifford already dead. Authorities, including the FBI, suspect Mark may know the location of the missing senator's body.

2. 2

   Act 2

   One Dollar, One Secret

   At the hospital, Mark meets attorney Regina 'Reggie' Love, a fifty-ish recovering alcoholic who has left a big-firm law practice to specialize in child advocacy, and hires her on the spot for a retainer of one dollar. 'A dollar. That's my retainer. One dollar. Now tell me what's going on.' Reggie explains her shield: 'I'm a lawyer. I can't tell anyone what you tell me. It's called the attorney-client privilege.' She suspects he is holding back the full story, including the location of the body, and warns him not to tell anyone until she knows more. Mafia operatives Bono and Pirini are dispatched from New Orleans by Johnny Sulari to Memphis to find out what Mark knows. They hire local private investigators Nance and Sisson to watch the hospital and snoop around. Mark is cornered in a hospital stairwell by Nance, one of the hired thugs, who threatens to kill him if he talks to the authorities: 'If you talk, I'll kill you. I'll kill your mother. I'll kill your little brother.' Mark is terrified but does not tell anyone about the threat. Reggie represents Mark during an FBI interview in the hospital, controlling the interview and shielding him from revealing what he knows. Mark continues to lie, saying Clifford told him nothing. Roy Foltrigg, the flamboyant U.S. Attorney from New Orleans nicknamed 'Reverend Roy' for his habit of preaching to juries, arrives in Memphis desperate to find Senator Boyette's body and build a case against Barry Muldanno. He pushes hard on the case because he has political ambitions, including a possible run for governor or senator.

3. 3

   Act 3

   Detention, Fire, Escape

   The system closes in. Judge Harry Roosevelt of the Memphis Juvenile Court, a no-nonsense judge, reluctantly orders Mark detained for his own protection, and Mark is arrested in his brother Ricky's hospital room and taken to the Memphis Juvenile Detention Center. In court before Judge Roosevelt, a terrified Mark takes the Fifth Amendment and refuses to answer any questions about what Jerome Clifford told him. The judge sends him back to detention. In detention, Mark fakes a severe stomach ailment by drinking dish soap, is taken back to the hospital, and escapes through a bathroom window, fleeing to Reggie's office. The mob escalates: Bono and Pirini burn the Sway family's trailer to the ground to pressure Mark, leaving Dianne and the boys homeless with almost nothing. Dianne Sway, Mark's mother, loses her minimum-wage job at a garment factory. Reggie threatens the company president with a lawsuit, forcing him to keep sending Dianne's paychecks and fresh flowers to Ricky's hospital room. K.O. Lewis, Deputy Director of the FBI, gets involved in the case and proposes a deal: if Mark reveals the body's location, the Sway family will enter the federal Witness Protection Program and receive new identities. Mark finally tells Reggie the truth: Clifford said the body is buried under concrete in the boat shed behind his house in New Orleans. Reggie now knows the location.

4. 4

   Act 4

   The Boat Shed

   Reggie and Mark drive to New Orleans and go to Jerome Clifford's house. They arrive at the same time as Barry Muldanno's men, who are digging up the boat shed floor with jackhammers. A fight breaks out at the boat shed. Reggie and Mark hide and watch as Muldanno's men flee when a neighbor calls the police. Mark and Reggie then see the body before escaping themselves. The Sway family agrees to enter Witness Protection. A special psychiatric hospital in a secret location is arranged for Ricky's treatment. As the Sway family boards an FBI plane to leave Memphis, Reggie finally tells K.O. Lewis that the body is buried under the concrete floor of Jerome Clifford's boat shed in New Orleans, fulfilling her part of the deal. The book ends with Mark looking out the airplane window as Memphis disappears beneath him, knowing his old life is over forever.

• MMark SwayAn eleven-year-old Memphis kid with a street survivor's instincts, holding a secret that could get him killed. He lies to the FBI, takes the Fifth, escapes detention, and trades the secret for his family's new life.
• RReggie LoveA fifty-ish recovering alcoholic who left big-firm law to protect children, hired for one dollar. She shields Mark from the FBI and the mob, then reveals the body's location only after the family's plane leaves.
• RRicky SwayMark's eight-year-old brother, who witnesses Clifford's suicide and goes catatonic. His hospitalization makes the family vulnerable and his recovery shapes their escape.
• DDianne SwayMark's divorced mother, holding the family together in a trailer park. She loses her home to arson and her sweatshop job, and ends the book flying toward a new identity.
• RRoy FoltriggThe flamboyant New Orleans U.S. Attorney, 'Reverend Roy,' who preaches to juries and wants the body for his political ambitions. He pressures Mark and schemes to pierce Reggie's privilege.
• BBarry 'The Blade' MuldannoThe mob hitman suspected of killing Senator Boyette, who told Clifford where the body is buried. His men dig for it and burn the Sways out.
• JJerome CliffordThe New Orleans lawyer whose drunken suicide in the Memphis woods hands Mark the fatal secret. He dies in the first chapter but drives everything that follows.
• KK.O. LewisThe FBI's Deputy Director, who cuts the deal: the body's location for Witness Protection. He gets the answer only after the plane lifts off.
• JJudge Harry RooseveltThe no-nonsense Memphis Juvenile Court judge who reluctantly detains Mark for his own protection and presides over his silence.
• NNanceA hired private investigator working for the mob, who corners Mark in a hospital stairwell and threatens to kill him and his family if he talks.

The hose from the exhaust pipe

The ordinary object that drags Mark into the story — a suicide's tool turned into a trap when Clifford grabs him. It stands for how quickly an act of decency becomes a death sentence, and how the book's whole conspiracy hangs on one rubber hose in the Memphis woods.

The one-dollar retainer

Reggie's fee is the price of real protection in a story where everything else — homes, jobs, lives — is destroyed. The dollar stands for justice that costs almost nothing and is worth everything, and for a lawyer who measures her worth in clients saved, not fees billed.

The boat shed

The concrete floor where a senator's body lies hidden is the story's buried truth — literally sealed under a surface everyone is trying to crack. Its fate mirrors the plot: jackhammered by the mob, watched by a child, finally given up by a lawyer only when the family is beyond reach.

The burning trailer

The mob's arson erases the Sways' home and everything in it, marking the point of no return. It stands for how far the conspiracy will go against a family that owns almost nothing — and it clears the way, grimly, for the new identities the ending requires.

The FBI plane

The plane that carries the Sways away is both rescue and exile: safety bought with the permanent loss of their old lives. Mark watching Memphis vanish beneath him makes it the book's final image — protection and erasure in the same machine.

The ending is a transaction, and Grisham lets you feel its cost. Reggie honors the deal — she gives K.O. Lewis the boat shed's location — but only after the family is airborne, untouchable, beyond retaliation. Read one way, it's a victory: a kid outlasts the mob and the government, and a lawyer's word proves trustworthy. Read another, it's a quiet defeat: Mark loses Memphis, his name, his old life forever, and the last image is a boy at a window watching it all disappear. The book lands because it refuses to celebrate — witness protection saves the Sways by erasing them. Whether that's justice or just a cleaner form of loss is the question the final page leaves open.

1. 1.Is Reggie's delay — telling the FBI only after the plane leaves — loyalty, strategy, or a breach of her duty to the truth? What does it say about who the law actually protects?
2. 2.The FBI detains an eleven-year-old 'for his own protection' while the mob threatens to kill him. Which institution does more damage to Mark, and what does that symmetry imply?
3. 3.The ending trades the Sways' entire identity for safety. Is witness protection a rescue or a erasure — and can a child ever consent to that trade?

Anyone who wants a thriller where the stakes are a child's survival and the hero is a recovering-alcoholic lawyer working for a dollar. Ideal for readers who like Grisham's momentum but remember Reggie Love more than any courtroom.

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