The Firm is a 1991 legal thriller by American writer John Grisham. It was his second book and the first which gained wide popularity. In 1993, after selling 1.5 million copies, it was made into a namesake film starring Tom Cruise, Gene Hackman and Jeanne Tripplehorn. Grisham's first novel, A Time to Kill, came into prominence afterwards due to this novel's success. Plot Mitch McDeere is a graduate of Western Kentucky University with a degree in accounting, who has passed his Certified Public Accountant exam on the first attempt and graduated third in his class at Harvard Law School. Mitch is married to his high-school sweetheart, Abby McDeere, an elementary school teacher who also attended Western Kentucky University. His older brother Ray is imprisoned in Tennessee for manslaughter, and his other brother, Rusty, died in Vietnam. His mother suffers from mental health issues and lives in Florida. Mitch spurns offers from law firms in New York and Chicago in favor of signing with Bendini, Lambert and Locke, a small tax law firm based in Memphis. He finds the firm's offer — a large salary, a lease on a new BMW, and a low-interest mortgage on a house — too generous to resist. Soon after he joins, his new colleagues help him study and pass his bar exam, the first priority for new associates. Mitch is assigned to partner Avery Tolar, the firm's "bad boy," but a highly accomplished attorney. Two of Mitch's colleagues, Marty Kozinski and Joe Hodge, die in a scuba diving accident in the Cayman Islands a few days before he starts at the firm. On his first scheduled day of work, Mitch attends their funerals. Mitch finds the deaths unsettling, but focuses on his goal of becoming the youngest partner in the firm's history. During a memorial service at the firm for the two deceased attorneys, Mitch notices plaques commemorating three other attorneys who died while working at the firm. Suspicious, he hires a private investigator, Eddie Lomax, an ex-cellmate of his brother Ray, to investigate the deaths. Lomax discovers that the other three deceased attorneys died under suspicious circumstances: in a car accident, a hunting accident, and a suicide. While the details of their deaths don't add up, nothing concrete was ever proven. Lomax cautions Mitch to be careful. Soon after delivering his report to Mitch, Lomax is murdered. FBI agent Wayne Tarrance confronts Mitch, telling