The Client

The protagonist, Mark Sway, is the character who drives the plot and its events. He is eleven years old, mistrustful, arrogant and predisposed to getting into trouble. Being such a young age, he is inexperienced and afraid which explains the fear he feels when he witnesses the lawyer of a famous Mobster, Barry Muldanno, commit suicide. Just before the lawyer shot himself, he told Mark a large secret. He told him that his client, Barry Muldanno, killed the senator and buried him in the lawyer’s garage. Mark knows these men are dangerous and seems to be in shock at what he has just witnessed, and now what he has been trusted to keep secret. Prosecutors are now willing to break all the rules to make him talk, and the mob will stop at nothing to keep him quiet. In fear of the life of his family, and his own, Marks decision to withhold valuable information serves to protect him while also dismantling justice.

Throughout the novel, Mark Sway is repeatedly questioned on the whereabouts of the body of the Senator. He has many opportunities to tell of this awful secret, but chooses not to in the protection of his own life. In Chapter 6, Mark has his first questioning with Officer Hardy. He asked him what he was doing in the forest with his brother, and slowly escaladed to asking what happened when he was dragged into the lawyer’s car. When this question came, Mark hit a stage of panic and tried to lie his way through it. Officer Hardy knew that he wasn’t telling the truth, this was known because he continuously stated, “your story is full of holes”. For one of his last questionings, Mark was brought to the Juvenile Court Building in Memphis, where he was put under oath and questioned by the Honorable Harry Roosevelt. Like Officer Hardy, Roosevelt started with the basic questions to make Mark more comfortable in the environment he was in. Once he started asking about the Senator, Mark became overly quiet which built suspicion among the court. Roosevelt orders Mark to tell what he knows about the murder and the whereabouts of the body but each time Mark takes the “fifth amendment”. It is clearly shown throughout the book that the reason Mark decides to withhold the information he knew about the murder was because he was scared. The law tries to take this into consideration; however, the information that is hidden is extremely important to the investigation and with this, Mark is ordered to talk.

The fact that Mark was scared is proven at many times in the novel, only because he explains