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The Whistler: The Number One Bestseller Paperback – 27 June 2017
John Grisham (Author) Find all the books, read about the author, and more. See search results for this author |
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Enhance your purchase
- Print length352 pages
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherHodder Paperbacks
- Publication date27 June 2017
- Dimensions16.9 x 2.6 x 20 cm
- ISBN-101444791095
- ISBN-13978-1444791099
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Review
John Grisham has perfected the art of cooking up convincing, fast-paced thrillers ― Telegraph
Leaves one eager for more ― Spectator
A master storyteller ― Huffington Post
A fascinating look at judicial corruption - an entirely convincing story and one of Grisham's best. ― Washington Post
It may seem odd to describe a jigsaw as nail-biting, but that is precisely what John Grisham delivers. ― Daily Mail
Hang on to your subpoenas, it's an exhilaratingly fast and dangerous ride. ― The Sunday Times
[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
Grisham 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
'Electrifying... 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
No one can make the legal fraternity quite as exciting. ― West Australian
another gratifying Grisham tale where David dances round Goliath and lands a knockout punch. ― South Coast Register
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Product details
- Publisher : Hodder Paperbacks; 1st edition (27 June 2017)
- Language : English
- Paperback : 352 pages
- ISBN-10 : 1444791095
- ISBN-13 : 978-1444791099
- Dimensions : 16.9 x 2.6 x 20 cm
- Best Sellers Rank: 22,537 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- Customer Reviews:
About the author

Long before his name became synonymous with the modern legal thriller, he was working 60-70 hours a week at a small Southaven, Mississippi, law practice, squeezing in time before going to the office and during courtroom recesses to work on his hobby—writing his first novel.
Born on February 8, 1955 in Jonesboro, Arkansas, to a construction worker and a homemaker, John Grisham as a child dreamed of being a professional baseball player. Realizing he didn’t have the right stuff for a pro career, he shifted gears and majored in accounting at Mississippi State University. After graduating from law school at Ole Miss in 1981, he went on to practice law for nearly a decade in Southaven, specializing in criminal defense and personal injury litigation. In 1983, he was elected to the state House of Representatives and served until 1990.
One day at the DeSoto County courthouse, 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. Initially rejected by many publishers, it was eventually bought by Wynwood Press, who gave it a modest 5,000 copy printing and published it in June 1988.
That might have put an end to Grisham’s hobby. However, he had already begun his next book, and it would quickly turn that hobby into a new full-time career—and spark one of publishing’s greatest success stories. The day after Grisham completed A Time to Kill, he began work on another novel, the story of a hotshot young attorney lured to an apparently perfect law firm that was not what it appeared. When he sold the film rights to The Firm to Paramount Pictures for $600,000, Grisham suddenly became a hot property among publishers, and book rights were bought by Doubleday. Spending 47 weeks on The New York Times bestseller list, The Firm became the bestselling novel of 1991.
The successes of The Pelican Brief, which hit number one on the New York Times bestseller list, and The Client, which debuted at number one, confirmed Grisham’s reputation as the master of the legal thriller. Grisham’s success even renewed interest in A Time to Kill, which was republished in hardcover by Doubleday and then in paperback by Dell. This time around, it was a bestseller.
Since first publishing A Time to Kill in 1988, Grisham has written at least one book a year (his other works are The Firm, The Pelican Brief, The Client, The Chamber, The Rainmaker, The Runaway Jury, The Partner, The Street Lawyer, The Testament, The Brethren, A Painted House, Skipping Christmas, The Summons, The King of Torts, Bleachers, The Last Juror, The Broker, Playing for Pizza, The Appeal, The Associate, The Confession, The Litigators, Calico Joe, The Racketeer, Sycamore Row, Gray Mountain, Rogue Lawyer, The Whistler, Camino Island, The Rooster Bar, The Reckoning, and The Guardians) and all of them have become international bestsellers. There are currently more than 350 million John Grisham books in print worldwide, which have been translated into 45 languages. Nine of his novels have been turned into films (The Firm, The Pelican Brief, The Client, A Time to Kill, The Rainmaker, The Chamber, A Painted House, The Runaway Jury, and Skipping Christmas), as was an original screenplay, The Gingerbread Man. The Innocent Man (October 2006) marked his first foray into non-fiction, and Ford County (November 2009) was his first short story collection. In addition, Grisham has written seven novels for young adults, all in the Theodore Boone series: Kid Lawyer, The Abduction, The Accused, The Activist, The Fugitive, The Scandal, and The Accomplice.
Grisham took time off from writing for several months in 1996 to return, after a five-year hiatus, to the courtroom. He was honoring a commitment made before he had retired from the law to become a full-time writer: representing the family of a railroad brakeman killed when he was pinned between two cars. Preparing his case with the same passion and dedication as his books’ protagonists, Grisham successfully argued his clients’ case, earning them a jury award of $683,500—the biggest verdict of his career.
When he’s not writing, Grisham devotes time to charitable causes, including most recently his Rebuild The Coast Fund, which raised 8.8 million dollars for Gulf Coast relief in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. He also keeps up with his greatest passion: baseball. The man who dreamed of being a professional baseball player now serves as the local Little League commissioner. The six ballfields he built on his property have played host to over 350 kids on 26 Little League teams.
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The background is a casino built on Indian land in Florida. It massively enriches the Tappacola tribe whose land it occupies, but it enriches further still the ruthless and violent crime organisation – the Coast Mafia – that is working in the shadows of the background. Nor does that Mafia, or its puppets in the Native American tribe, stop at the Casino: golf courses, housing and entertainment developments follow, all of them delivering huge revenues in well-laundered money to the criminals behind them.
One of the associates of this criminal endeavour is a judge who has been delivering judgements that the gang needs, in turn for a generous share of the proceeds. They include the case Grisham describes in the prequel to this novel, ‘Witness to a Trial: a Short Story Prequel to The Whistler’, in which a Tappacola opponent to the casino is murdered and his associate is framed for the crime.
The novel starts with the matter of the judge. An anonymous tipoff, ultimately from a mysterious whistle-blowing mole who gives the novel its title, is received by the Board of Judicial Conduct. Lacy Stolz, the protagonist, has been assigned the case and we begin to follow her investigation from page 1.
Of course, there is far more than judicial misconduct at stake. Behind that single offence lies a whole criminal conspiracy. And it’s violent.
Grisham takes us into that world in a thoroughly gripping series of events. There are enough bodies on the way for us to believe it possible that they may ultimately include the people with whom we sympathise the most. So will the novel end with the gangsters coming out on top and our protagonists dead? Or, on the contrary, will the criminals be unmasked, arrested and punished?
You want to know? You’ll have to read the book. But don’t worry: you should be highly entertained on the way.

Like Camino Island this feels like a man going through the motions [to meet a deadline or a contractual obligation?], because while he's not run out of ideas he has run out of steam.
Read only if you are John Grisham completist.

There are many goodies and baddies , but the plot is simple: baddies get a crooked judge on board and illegally siphon vast funds from a native American owned casino in sunny Florida ,but the department responsible for investigating crooked judges give chase and eventually sort them out. There are interesting passages and some really hard to believe passages and overall it is far from being a page turner. It trundles on for a while and finally ends with a whimper. Perhaps the publishers new they had a dud and hence their rather sharp marketing ( see my review of Witness to a Trial...a Short Story).
I have now read several other reviews and find that I am not alone in my view.
This is a poor John Grisham novel, but a poor John Grisham is still possibly worth reading. Just don't expect too much.