that once you joined the firm you never leave, like it's owned by the Mafia or something.” Well that was ten years earlier but the idea stuck.Grisham began writing The Firm the day after he finished A Time to Kill. When he sent the draft to his agent, bootleg copies were made and the story was shopped around Hollywood without Grisham’s knowledge and purchased by Paramount Pictures for $600,000. The existence of a movie deal drove demand for the book deal and the book was purchased by Doubleday. Reception The book spent 47 weeks on The New York Times Best Seller list and was the No. 1 novel of 1991. Marilyn Stasio of The New York Times wrote that "Mr. Grisham, a criminal defense attorney, writes with such relish about the firm's devious legal practices that his novel might be taken as a how-to manual for ambitious tax-law students." The success of the novel and the 1993 film led to a 2012 television show set ten years after the events of the original story and ended up running for one season. Differences with movie adaptation The film based on Grisham's book kept the earlier part of the plot, but has a completely different ending. In the film, Mitch makes a deal with the FBI for his brother's release along with large sums of money in exchange for information about his firm's clients. But rather than betray his oath as a lawyer by turning the confidential files over to the FBI, Mitch finds a devious legal way to keep both the FBI and the Mafia off his back so he can continue to practice as a lawyer though not in Tennessee. Reviewer George Crown noted that "In this case, I have the distinct feeling that the film improved on the book. The book's Mitch undergoes a very sudden transformation - plodding lawyer to dashing action hero. Virtually nothing in what had gone before has given us any idea that he had that in him. The film's Mitch, conversely, stays very much in character. He was a clever young lawyer to start with, that was why The Firm took him on in the first place - but he just gives them a bit more than they bargained for. His way of getting out of the predicament is the quintessential lawyer's way: a very neat, devious (and a bit dubious) legal solution, which