The Brethren Author:John Grisham They call themselves The Brethren: three disgraced former judges doing time in a Florida federal prison. One was sent up for tax evasion. Another, for skimming bingo profits. And the third, for a career-ending drunken joyride. Meeting daily in the prison law library, taking exercise walks in their boxer shorts, these judges-turned-felons can rem... more »inisce about old court cases, dispense a little jailhouse justice, and contemplate where their lives went wrong.
Or they can use their time in prison to get very rich--very fast. And so they sit, sprawled in the prison library, furiously writing letters, fine-tuning a wickedly brilliant extortion scam...while events outside their prison walls begin to erupt. A bizarre presidential election is holding the nation in its grips--and a powerful government figure is pulling some very hidden strings. For The Brethren, the timing couldn't be better. Because they've just found the perfect victim...« less
The premise here was enormously fun: three aging, disgraced judges serving time in a minimum security federal prison concoct a mail scam to extort money from unsuspecting victims. Their little scheme is succeeding quite well, slowly building enough money to give them hope that perhaps there is life after prison. When it turns out that one of the victims of the mail scam is the front-runner in the upcoming presidential election, things get very interesting and suddenly the three inmates realize they have far more power than they thought.
You'll be hooked within the first chapter. Grisham has a great sense of humor and it shows in this book, both in the characters and in the dialog.