The Pelican Brief by John Grisham

I read this for a Goodreads challeng--I picked it because I had just read a trio of Grisham books that came much later than this one (which was written in the early 1990's) and enjoyed them. The thing I didn't expect was that I would find it so relevant to the politics of 2026. So much corruption, so much graft and so much doing whatever they want. The grifters and the murderers have close ties with the President. SOund familiar? Apparently it is not new--Grisham wrote the play book and others are following it. Here's what happens. One morning America learns two Supreme Court justices have been murdered the previous night. Justice Rosenberg and Justice Jensen are different--one is reliably liberal and you could see the conservative president replacing him with someone who would shift the balance of the court, but the other is not, he is more likely to lean right, and the question arises who would have killed both of them. Law professor Thomas Callahan is heartbroken, but his brilliant student Darby Shaw sees the whole situation as a big puzzle. She starts preparing a legal brief (later to be called the Pelican Brief and you'll find out why) trying to find out who was behind the murders. Someone has to get advantage out of the deaths, and she studied an enormous amount of cases before she untangled the web of who is to gain. Darby gives her legal brief to Thomas, who then gives it to his llife long FBI friend, who spreads it widely. But the bried ends up ruffling feathers, the president squashes the investigation, but after Thomas is killed and Darby is on the run. This is more thriller than legal thriller, but it is well written, keeps the momentum up to the end, and again, it seems all too plausible.