Point of View

In The Pelican Brief, John Grisham adopts the third person omniscient viewpoint for narrative portions, using no intermediate narrator. Dialogue is, of course, in the first person. Befitting a mystery, clues are doled out gradually, and paired characters often debate the current body of knowledge. As the principals are lawyers, law students, and journalists, such churning of the evidence is appropriate and effectively handled. It is not clear until the end who all of the people pursuing Darby Shaw, author of the pelican brief, are. The final threads are tied off when the FBI Director tells Shaw what he knows and apologizes for the Bureau sending in the troops so slowly that friends of hers are killed and she is nearly taken out at least three times. The Director also shares what he believes to be the part played by the CIA—the rival agencies...