The Testament [Englisch] [Taschenbuch]

Dieser Titel ist in englischer Sprache.
Troy Phelan, ein 78-jähriger Exzentriker und zehntreichster Mann Amerikas, ist im Begriff, sein Testament vorzulesen, in dem es um die Aufteilung eines Besitzes im Wert von elf Milliarden Dollar geht. Phelans drei Ex-Frauen, ihr habgieriger Nachwuchs, eine Legion von Rechtsanwälten, einige Psychiater und eine Ansammlung von Tontechnikern warten gebannt, ihre Augen auf digitalen Monitoren fixiert, während der alte Mann das Urteil liest. Aber Phelan schockiert jeden, indem er -- in den letzten Zügen liegend -- eine bizarre Umverteilung der Ausbeute verkündet und damit eine juristische Moralität über ein angefochtenes Testament, Sünde und Erlösung in Gang setzt.

Unser Protagonist Nate O'Riley -- ein kaputter, alkoholsüchtiger Anwalt mit zwei zerbrochenen Ehen hinter sich und den Finanzbehörden auf den Fersen -- wird in die Feuchtgebiete Brasiliens geschickt, um eine geheimnisvolle Erbin, die im Testament erwähnt wird, aufzuspüren. Nach einer qualvollen Bootsfahrt flußaufwärts zu einer abgelegenen Siedlung im Pantanal, trifft er auf Rachel Lane, eine Missionarin mit einem reinen Herz, die bei einem Eingeborenenstamm lebt und "Gottes Werk" ausführt. Rachels große Hingabe und Güte beeindruckt den abgestumpften Rechtsanwalt dermaßen, daß er in einem schlimmen Anfall von Denguefieber eine Vision hat, die sein Leben verändern könnte.

Derweil, in den Staaten, zieht sich der Prozeß in die Länge, und Grisham hat seinen Spaß mit Phelans geldgierigen Nachkommen -- einem bedauerlichen Haufen, der Millionen verschleuderte, sich mit Strippern verheiratete, den Drogen verfiel und den Umgang mit dem Mob pflegte. Der jüngste Sohn Ramble ist ein mehrfach gepierceter, tattoo-übersähter Nörgler, der große Pläne für seine Rockband, die "Demon Monkeys", hegt. Kommt Nate mit Rachels Hilfe wieder auf die Beine? Bekommen die gierigen Erben ihren Anteil? Was ist das wirkliche Vermächtnis eines Lebenswerks? The Testament ist ein klassischer Grisham: ein heruntergekommener Rechtsanwalt, ein Haufen Geld, eine actiongeladene Jagd und höchste Werte, die auf dem Spiel stehen. Hier geht es nicht nur um große Charaktere; hier geht es um die Frage, was Charakter eigentlich ist. --Rebekah Warren -- Dieser Text bezieht sich auf eine andere Ausgabe: Gebundene Ausgabe .

Troy Phelan, a 78-year-old eccentric and the 10th-richest man in America, is about to read his last will and testament, divvying up an estate worth $11 billion. Phelan's three ex-wives, thei r grasping offspring, a legion of lawyers, several psychiatrists and a plethora of sound technician s wait breathlessly. However, the magnate shocks everyone with a bizarre, last-gasp attempt to redi stribute the spoils, setting in motion a legal morality tale of a contested will, sin, and redempti on.

Nate O'Riley--a washed-up, alcoholic lawyer with two ruined marriages in his wake and the taxman on his tail--is dispatched to the Brazilian wetlands in search of a mysterious heir named in the will . After a harrowing trip upriver, he encounters Rachel Lane, a pure-hearted missionary living with an indigenous tribe and carrying out "God's work." Rachel's grave dedication and kindness impress the jaded lawyer, so much so that a nasty bout of dengue fever leads him to a vision that could cha nge his life.

Back in the States, the legal proceedings drag on and Grisham has a high time with Phelan's money-hungry descendents, a regrettable bunch who squandered millions, married strippers, got druggy, and befriended the Mob. The youngest son, Ramble, is a multi-pierced, tattoo-covered malcontent with big dreams for his rock band, the Demon Monkeys. Will Nate get straight with Rachel's aid? Do the greedy heirs get theirs? What's the real legacy of a lifetime's work? The Testament is classic Grisham: a down-and-out lawyer, a lot of money, an action-packed pursuit, and the highest issues at stake. It's not just about great characters; it's about the question of what character is. --Rebekah Warren -- Dieser Text bezieht sich auf eine vergriffene oder nicht verfügbare Ausgabe dieses Titels.

Troy Phelan, a 78-year-old eccentric and the 10th-richest man in America, is about to read his last will and testament, divvying up an estate worth $11 billion. Phelan's three ex-wives, their grasping spawn, a legion of lawyers, several psychiatrists, and a plethora of sound technicians wait breathlessly, all eyes glued to digital monitors as they watch the old man read his verdict. But Phelan shocks everyone with a bizarre, last-gasp attempt to redistribute the spoils, setting in motion a legal morality tale of a contested will, sin, and redemption.

Our hero, Nate O'Riley--a washed-up, alcoholic litigator with two ruined marriages in his wake and the IRS on his tail--is dispatched to the Brazilian wetlands in search of a mysterious heir named in the will. After a harrowing trip upriver to a remote settlement in the Pantanal, he encounters Rachel Lane, a pure-hearted missionary living with an indigenous tribe and carrying out "God's work." Rachel's grave dedication and kindness impress the jaded lawyer, so much that a nasty bout of dengue fever leads him to a vision that could change his life.

Back in the States, the legal proceedings drag on and Grisham has a high time with Phelan's money-hungry descendents, a regrettable bunch who squandered millions, married strippers, got druggy, and befriended the Mob. The youngest son, Ramble, is a multi-pierced, tattoo-covered malcontent with big dreams for his rock band, the Demon Monkeys. Will Nate get straight with Rachel's aid? Do the greedy heirs get theirs? What's the real legacy of a lifetime's work? The Testament is classic Grisham: a down-and-out lawyer, a lot of money, an action-packed pursuit, and the highest issues at stake. It's not just about great characters; it's about the question of what character is. --Rebekah Warren -- Dieser Text bezieht sich auf eine andere Ausgabe: Gebundene Ausgabe .

Featuring a billionaire, a litigator straight from rehab, and a woman who works with primitive tribes in Brazil.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc. -- Dieser Text bezieht sich auf eine vergriffene oder nicht verfügbare Ausgabe dieses Titels.

"An entertaining page-turner...his best novel in years."—USA Today

"A compulsory page-turner."—Newsweek

"Entertaining."—The New York Times Book Review

"Absorbing...the pages fly by."—Chicago Tribune

Der milliardenschwere Exzentriker Troy Phelan ist lebensmüde. Doch bevor er sich aus dem 13. Stock stürzt, verfasst er ein Testament, in dem er sein gesamtes Vermögen seiner der Familie bis dahin völlig unbekannten, unehelichen Tochter Rachel vermacht. Während die aufgebrachte Verwandtschaft das Testament anficht, versucht der Staranwalt Nate O'Riley die Erbin aufzuspüren. Doch wie eine Person finden, die als Missionarin im unzugänglichen brasilianischen Regenwald arbeitet? -- Dieser Text bezieht sich auf eine vergriffene oder nicht verfügbare Ausgabe dieses Titels.

John Grisham, geboren 1955, ist einer der meistgelesenen Bestseller-Autoren weltweit. Er war Abgeordneter im Parlament des US-Staates Mississippi und führte lange Jahre eine eigene Anwaltskanzlei, bis er sich seit Mitte der Achtzigerjahre ganz dem Schreiben widmete. Er lebt mit seiner Familie in Virginia und Mississippi. -- Dieser Text bezieht sich auf eine vergriffene oder nicht verfügbare Ausgabe dieses Titels.

I sit and stare through the tinted glass walls. On a clear day, I can see the top of the Washington Monument six miles away, but not today. Today is raw and cold, windy and overcast, not a bad day to die. The wind blows the last of the leaves from their branches and scatters them through the parking lot below.

Why I am worried about the pain? What's wrong with a little suffering? I've caused more misery than any ten people.

I push a button and Snead appears. He bows and pushes my wheelchair through the door of my apartment, into the marble foyer, down the marble hall, through another door. We're getting closer, but I feel no anxiety.

I've kept the shrinks waiting for over two hours.

We pass my office and I nod at Nicolette, my latest secretary, a darling young thing I'm quite fond of. Given some time, she might become number four.

But there is no time. Only minutes.

A mob is waiting--packs of lawyers and some psychiatrists who'll determine if I'm in my right mind. They are crowded around a long table in my conference room, and when I enter, their conversation stops immediately and everybody stares. Snead situates me on one side of the table, next to my lawyer, Stafford.

There are cameras pointing in all directions, and the technicians scramble to get them focused. Every whisper, every move, every breath will be recorded because a fortune is at stake.

The last will I signed gave little to my children. Josh Stafford prepared it, as always. I shredded it this morning.

I'm sitting here to prove to the world that I am of sufficient mental capacity to make a new will. Once it is proved, the disposition of my assets cannot be questioned.

Directly across from me are three shrinks--one hired by each family. On folded index cards before them someone has printed their names--Dr. Zadel, Dr. Flowe, Dr. Theishen. I study their eyes and faces. Since I am supposed to appear sane, I must make eye contact.

They expect me to be somewhat loony, but I'm about to eat them for lunch.

Stafford will run the show. When everyone is settled and the cameras are ready, he says, "My name is Josh Stafford, and I'm the attorney for Mr. Troy Phelan, seated here to my right."

I take on the shrinks, one at a time, eye to eye, glare to glare, until each blinks or looks away. All three wear dark suits. Zadel and Flowe have scraggly beards. Theishen has a bow tie and looks no more than thirty. The families were given the right to hire anyone they wanted.

Stafford is talking. "The purpose of this meeting is to have Mr. Phelan examined by a panel of psychiatrists to determine his testamentary capacity. Assuming the panel finds him to be of sound mind, then he intends to sign a will which will dispose of his assets upon his death."

Stafford taps his pencil on a one-inch-thick will lying before us. I'm sure the cameras zoom in for a close-up, and I'm sure the very sight of the document sends shivers up and down the spines of my children and their mothers scattered throughout my building.

They haven't seen the will, nor do they have the right to. A will is a private document revealed only after death. The heirs can only speculate as to what it might contain. My heirs have received hints, little lies I've carefully planted.

They've been led to believe that the bulk of my estate will somehow be divided fairly among the children, with generous gifts to the ex-wives. They know this; they can feel it. They've been praying fervently for this for weeks, even months. This is life and death for them because they're all in debt. The will lying before me is supposed to make them rich and stop the bickering. Stafford prepared it, and in conversations with their lawyers he has, with my permission, painted in broad strokes the supposed contents of the will. Each child will receive something in the range of three hundred to five hundred million, with another fifty million going to each of the three ex-wives. These women were well provided for in the divorces, but that, of course, has been forgotten.

Total gifts to the families of approximately three billion dollars. After the government rakes off several billion the rest will go to charity.

So you can see why they're here, shined, groomed, sober (for the most part), and eagerly watching the monitors and waiting and hoping that I, the old man, can pull this off. I'm sure they've told their shrinks, "Don't be too hard on the old boy. We want him sane."

If everyone is so happy, then why bother with this psychiatric examination? Because I'm gonna screw 'em one last time, and I want to do it right.

The shrinks are my idea, but my children and their lawyers are too slow to realize it.

Zadel goes first. "Mr. Phelan, can you tell us the date, time, and place?"

I feel like a first-grader. I drop my chin to my chest like an imbecile and ponder the question long enough to make them ease to the edge of their seats and whisper, "Come on, you crazy old bastard. Surely you know what day it is."

"Monday," I say softly. "Monday, December 9, 1996. The place is my office."

"The time?"

"About two-thirty in the afternoon," I say. I don't wear a watch.

"And where is your office?"

"McLean, Virginia."

Flowe leans into his microphone. "Can you state the names and birthdates of your children?"

"No. The names, maybe, but not the birthdates."

"Okay, give us the names."

I take my time. It's too early to be sharp. I want them to sweat. "Troy Phelan, Jr., Rex, Libbigail, Mary Ross, Geena, and Ramble." I utter these as if they're painful to even think about.

Flowe is allowed a follow-up. "And there was a seventh child, right?"

"Right."

"Do you remember his name?"

"Rocky."

"And what happened to him?"

"He was killed in an auto accident." I sit straight in my wheelchair, head high, eyes darting from one shrink to the next, projecting pure sanity for the cameras. I'm sure my children and my ex-wives are proud of me, watching the monitors in their little groups, squeezing the hands of their current spouses, and smiling at their hungry lawyers because old Troy so far has handled the preliminaries.

My voice may be low and hollow, and I may look like a nut with my white silk robe, shriveled face, and green turban, but I've answered their questions.

Come on, old boy, they're pleading.

Theishen asks, "What is your current physical condition?"

"I've felt better."

"It's rumored you have a cancerous tumor."

Get right to the point, don't you?

"I thought this was a mental exam," I say, glancing at Stafford, who can't suppress a smile. But the rules allow any question. This is not a courtroom.

"It is," Theishen says politely. "But every question is relevant."

"I see."

"Will you answer the question?"

"About what?"

"About the tumor."

"Sure. It's in my head, the size of a golf ball, growing every day, inoperable, and my doctor says I won't last three months."

I can almost hear the champagne corks popping below me. The tumor has been confirmed!

"Are you, at this moment, under the influence of any medication, drug, or alcohol?"

"No."

"Do you have in your possession any type of medication to relieve pain?"

"Not yet."

Back to Zadel: "Mr. Phelan, three months ago Forbes magazine listed your net worth at eight billion dollars. Is that a close...

EXCERPT: Chapter One

Down to the last day, even the last hour now. I'm an old man, lonely and unloved, sick and hurting and tired of living. I am ready for the hereafter; it has to be better than this.

I own the tall glass building in which I sit, and 97 percent of the company housed in it, below me, and the land around it half a mile in three directions, and the two thousand people who work here and the other twenty thousand who do not, and I own the pipeline under the land that brings gas to the building from my fields in Texas, and I own the utility lines that deliver electricity, and I lease the satellite unseen miles above by which I once barked commands to my empire flung far around the world. My assets exceed eleven billion dollars. I own silver in Nevada and copper in Montana and coffee in Kenya and coal in Angola and rubber in Malaysia and natural gas in Texas and crude oil in Indonesia and steel in China. My company owns companies that produce electricity and make computers and build dams and print paperbacks and broadcast signals to my satellite. I have subsidiaries with divisions in more countries than anyone can find.

I once owned all the appropriate toys - the yachts and jets and blondes, the homes in Europe, farms in Argentina, an island in the Pacific, thoroughbreds, even a hockey team. But I've grown too old for toys. The money is the root of my misery.

I had three families - three ex-wives who bore seven children, six of whom are still alive and doing all they can to torment me. To the best of my knowledge, I fathered all seven, and buried one. I should say his mother buried him. I was out of the country. I am estranged from all the wives and all the children. They're gathering here today because I'm dying and it's time to divide the money.

I have planned this day for a long time. My building has fourteen floors, all long and wide and squared around a shaded courtyard in the rear where I once held lunches in the sunshine. I live and work on the top floor - twelve thousand square feet of opulence that would seem obscene to many but doesn't bother me in the least. By sweat and brains and luck I built every dime of my fortune. Spending it is my prerogative. Giving it away should be my choice too, but I'm being hounded.

Why should I care who gets the money? I've done everything imaginable with it. As I sit here in my wheelchair, alone and waiting, I cannot think of a single thing I want to buy, or see, or a single place I want to go, or another adventure I want to pursue. I've done it all, and I'm very tired. I don't care who gets the money. But I do care very much who does not get it.

Every square foot of this building was designed by me, and so I know exactly where to place everyone for this little ceremony. They're all here, waiting and waiting, though they don't mind. They'd stand naked in a blizzard for what I'm about to do.

The first family is Lillian and her brood - four of my offspring born to a woman who rarely let me touch her. We married young - I was twenty-four and she was eighteen - and so Lillian is old too. I haven't seen her in years, and I won't see her today. I'm sure she's still playing the role of the grieving, abandoned yet dutiful first wife who got traded in for a trophy. She has never remarried, and I'm sure she hasn't had sex in fifty years. I don't know how we reproduced.

Her oldest is now forty-seven, Troy Junior, a worthless idiot who is cursed with my name. As a boy he adopted the nickname of TJ, and still prefers it to Troy. Of the six children gathered here now, TJ is the dumbest, though it's close. He was tossed from college when he was nineteen for selling drugs.

TJ, like the rest, was given five million dollars on his twenty-first birthday. And like the rest, it ran like water through his fingers. I cannot bear to recount the miserable histories of Lillian's children. Suffice to say they're all heavily in debt and virtually unemployable, with little hope of changing, so my signing of this will is the most critical event in their lives.

Back to the ex-wives. From the frigidity of Lillian, I ran to the steamy passion of Janie, a beautiful young thing hired as a secretary in Accounting but promoted rapidly when I decided I needed her on business trips. I divorced Lillian and married Janie, who was twenty-two years younger than I was and determined to keep me satisfied. She had two children as fast as she could. She used them as anchors to keep me close. Rocky, the younger, was killed in a sports car with two of his buddies, in a wreck that cost me six million to settle out of court.

I married Tira when I was sixty-four. She was twenty-three and pregnant by me with a little monster she named Ramble, for some reason that was never clear to me. Ramble is now fourteen, and already has one arrest for shoplifting and one arrest for possession of marijuana. His oily hair sticks to his neck and falls way down his back, and he adorns himself with rings in his ears, eyebrows, and nose. I'm told he goes to school when he feels like it. Ramble is ashamed that his father is almost eighty, and his father is ashamed that his son has silver beads pierced through his tongue. And he, along with the rest of them, expects me to sign my name on this will and make his life better. As large as my fortune is, the money won't last long among these fools. -- Dieser Text bezieht sich auf eine vergriffene oder nicht verfügbare Ausgabe dieses Titels.