SOURCE: "Still More Lawyer-Bashing from Novelist John Grisham," in Chicago Tribune—Books, February 23, 1992, p. 4.

In the following review of The Pelican Brief, Toobin asserts that while Grisham's characters "lack humanity" and situations in the novel are implausible, his plots contain a "narrative drive that welcomes readers to suspend disbelief."

John Grisham has done it again—for better or worse. Grisham's 1991 legal thriller The Firm tells the story of a young attorney lured by a high salary to a mysterious Memphis law firm where the new associates have a habit of dropping dead. After learning the dark secrets behind the firm's success, the hero worries less about blowing the whistle on his employers than about stealing their money. The Firm rang true with a public willing to believe everything awful about lawyers and took up seemingly permanent residence on the best-seller lists.

Grisham now seeks a bigger stage for...