The Firm

The Firm
JOHN GRISHAM
Level 5 Retold by Robin Waterfield Series Editors: Andy Hopkins and Jocelyn Potter

Pearson Education Limited Edinburgh Gate, Harlow, Essex CM20 2JE, England and Associated Companies throughout the world. ISBN-13: 978-0-582-41827-1 ISBN-10: 0-582-41827-5 The Film ©John Grisham 1991 First published in United Kingdom by Century 1991 This adaptation first published byPenguin Books 1995 Published by Addison Wesley Longman Limited and Penguin Books Ltd. 1998 New edition first published 1999 9 10 Text copyright © Robin Waterfield 1995 Illustrations copyright © Bob Harvey (Pennant Illustration Agency) 1995 All rights reserved The moral right of the adapter and of the illustrator has been asserted

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Contents
page Introduction Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3 Chapter 4 Chapter 5 Chapter 6 Chapter 7 Chapter 8 Chapter 9 Chapter 10 Chapter11 Chapter 12 Chapter 13 Chapter 14 Chapter 15 Chapter 16 Chapter 17 Chapter 18 Chapter 19 Chapter 20 Chapter 21 Chapter 22 Chapter 23 Chapter 24 Chapter 25 Activities Mitchell McDeere Bendini, Lambert and Locke The Fifth Floor Sad News Long Hours A Tiny Microphone Tarrance Four People, Three of them Dead Grand Cayman Dangerous Waters A Professional Job Denton Voyles Shopping for Shoes Two BlackBriefcases Secret Talks No Kiss Tarry Ross Fitting the Pieces Together Avery's Illness Major Trouble On the Run The Hunt Gets Closer Panama City Beach On the Floor Among the Boxes The Pier iv 1 2 4 7 9 11 13 20 21 24 28 30 34 38 40 43 49 51 55 56 61 64 65 68 70 74

Introduction
'Mitch, what I'm about to tell you will certainly shock you. You won't want to believe it. But it's all true, andwith your help we can save you.' Mitchell McDeere wants to succeed. Young, handsome and intelligent, he wants it all: money, power, a big house and a fast car. He's climbing — and he wants to climb fast. So when he is offered a job at the super-rich law firm of Bendini, Lambert and Locke he cannot believe his luck. With the kind of money they offer him, all his dreams can come true. But dreams comeat a price. And the firm's price is high — very high. As high as Mitch's life — unless he fights, and fights hard. John Grisham is one of the world's best-selling authors. The Firm was his second novel and was a number one US best-seller for over a year. It was made into an exciting film in 1993 with Tom Cruise, Gene Hackman and Holly Hunter. Grisham was born in 1955 in Arkansas, in the US A, theson of a building worker. ('We didn't have a lot of money,' he has said. 'But we didn't know it.') He studied law and ran his own law firm for nine years, and was also a local politician in Mississippi. In 1984 he decided to write a novel and spent three years arriving at his office at 5 a.m. in order to write it. This was A Time to Kill. It did not sell well, but success soon followed. With themoney he made from The Firm, Grisham was able to give up his law practice and concentrate on writing. He lives on a farm in Oxford, Mississippi with his wife and two children. You can also read John Grisham's The Pelican Brief and The Client in Penguin Readers.

IV

Chapter 1

Mitchell McDeere

Mitchell Y. McDeere was twenty-five years old. He was about to graduate in the top five from...