The book I read was The Brethren, by John Grisham. It was a suspense book. Three
judges, called The Brethren by their fellow prisoners, lived in a very minimal
security prison. They had just begun fine – tuning a mail scam that extorted
homosexuals with families and lots of money. Then, they snag the wrong person,
someone very powerful on the outside. It seems The Brethren’s days of scamming
are over. This was a great book for many reasons. The first reason is it was
sort of double sided. What I mean by that is it explained 2 stories at once, the
story of Aaron Lake and the story of The Brethren. I liked this because it
helped to understand the situation a lot better. It also helped understand the
characters a lot more too. Another thing I liked about this book is the fact
that the scam was brilliant. The Brethren had nothing to loose because they were
already in prison, and they had so much to gain. These (the victims of the scam)
were people who couldn’t talk against The Brethren for fear of being caught by
their families. One example of the fact that the victims couldn’t report this
to the police was when The Brethren snagged Quince Garbe, who lived in a small
town and who’s father owned a bank. If Quince spoke out against The Brethren,
he would loose his father’s inheritance to the bank, and the whole town would
disrespect him. After he gave the Brethren their asking price of $100,000, they
immediately asked for another $20,000. He had no choice but to pay them. Another
reason I liked this book was it showed how corrupt our government could be.
Aaron Lake pretty much bought the election, getting almost 60 million dollars
from defense contractors in return to double the military budget. Of course, he
did have quite a bit of help from the C.I.A. who staged events in the Middle
East to increase enthusiasm for the doubled military budget. On a scale of one
to five (five being the highest rating) I would give this book a 4. It was a
pretty good plot and you didn’t know what was going to happen next. You
didn’t know if The Brethren would nail Aaron Lake or if the C.I.A. would knock
off The Brethren before they could nail him. I would first recommend this book
to anyone that likes reading because you have to like reading in order to enjoy
a longer book like this is. But if you are an experienced reader, and you know
what you like, then this book is for people who enjoy mystery, drama, and great
ending.