Upcoming: “Gray Mountain” by John Grisham (Doubleday)

I’m a big fan of John Grisham’s novels. They don’t all click for me, but many of them have been thoroughly enjoyable and entertaining. Today, details of his next thriller were unveiled! The novel, Gray Mountain, is due to be published in the US in October 2014 (not sure about the UK, yet). Here’s the description from Grisham’s website:

The Great Recession of 2008 left many young professionals out of work. Promising careers were suddenly ended as banks, hedge funds, and law firms engaged in mass lay-offs and brutal belt tightening. Samantha Kofer was a third year associate at Scully & Pershing, New York City’s largest law firm. Two weeks after Lehman Brothers collapsed, she lost her job, her security, and her future. A week later she was working as an unpaid intern in a legal aid clinic deep in small town Appalachia. There, for the first time in her career, she was confronted with real clients with real problems. She also stumbled across secrets that should have remained buried deep in the mountains forever.

Guest Post: “Influences & Inspirations” by Robert Bailey

Robert Bailey is the author of THE PROFESSOR, a legal thriller to be published by Exhibit A Books late January 2014.

I was born from a family of storytellers and teachers. My mother taught English and reading, and my grandmother, a math teacher, was never without a book to read. My father, though a builder by trade, can still hold a room captive with his stories and jokes, and, as a little boy, I was always on the edge of my chair when he would rasp on about Coach Paul “Bear” Bryant and the legends that played football for the Crimson Tide.

As far as writers, John Steinbeck was a major early influence. As a kid, I loved his shorter novels, The Red Pony and The Pearl. As a high school sophomore, we studied The Grapes of Wrath, and Tom Joad remains one of my favorite characters in all of literature. As a southerner and an Alabamian that grew up to be a lawyer, To Kill a Mockingbird holds a special place. I think every lawyer wants to grow up to be Atticus Finch, and the story just had everything. It was thrilling, historical, funny and tragic. Just a remarkable achievement.

Mini-Review: “A Time to Kill” by John Grisham (Arrow)

Grisham’s debut novel didn’t really work for me, sadly…

When Carl Lee Hailey guns down the monsters who have raped his ten-year-old child, the people of Clanton see it as a crime of blood and call for his acquittal.

But when extremists outside Clanton hear that a black man has killed two white men, they invade the town, determined to destroy anything and anyone that opposes their sense of justice.

Jake Brigance has been hired to defend Hailey. It's the kind of case that can make or break a young lawyer. But in the maelstrom of Clanton, it is also the kind of case that could get a young lawyer killed.

The story of Grisham giving away millions of dollars’ worth of A Time to Kill first editions is pretty well-known, now. After his first publisher went bankrupt, Grisham had to buy 1,000 copies of the 5,000 print run. Here’s what he told Newsweek:

“I took all the books down to the local library and we had a big book party. When the party was over, I still owned 882 copies… so I started giving books away. We took them back to my office and packed them in the reception area. The boxes were everywhere, and I would just give them away. If one of my clients wanted a book, I’d try to sell it. If not, I’d give it away. I’d sell them for 10 bucks, five bucks. I used them for doorstops. I couldn’t get rid of these books… These 5,000 books were the only first editions of A Time to Kill. That book today is worth about $4,000. I had 1,500 of them in my law office at one time. So that’s my big mistake — that’s about $6 million, the way I do the math.”

When I re-read A Time To Kill recently, I found it rather tricky. I’m a huge fan of Grisham’s novels, and have read them all – only two haven’t hit the mark for me (The Street Lawyer and, sadly, this one). But this one just didn’t have the skill and addictive quality of his later work. Mainly, that boils down to the way in which it was written, rather than the story itself, which is pretty great.

“The Racketeer” by John Grisham (Doubleday)

Grisham’s latest legal-conspiracy thriller

Given their importance, the controversies that often surround their work, and the violent people they sometimes confront, it is remarkable that in the history of the United States, only four active federal judges have been murdered. Judge Raymond Fawcett has just become number five.

Who is the Racketeer? And what does he have to do with the judge’s untimely demise? His name, for the moment, is Malcolm Bannister. Job status? Former attorney. Current residence? The Federal Prison Camp near Frostburg, Maryland. On paper, Malcolm’s situation isn’t looking too good these days, but he’s got an ace up his sleeve. He knows who killed Judge Fawcett, and he knows why. The judge’s body was found in his remote lakeside cabin. There was no forced entry, no struggle, just two dead bodies: Judge Fawcett and his young secretary. And one large, state-of-the-art, extremely secure safe, opened and emptied.

What was in the safe? The FBI want to know. Bannister would love to tell them. But everything has a price…

The Racketeer is another good novel from Grisham, an author whose work has rarely disappointed me. The novel plays to some of Grisham’s strengths – particularly his commentary on the American legal and penal systems, but it is not without its minor flaws. It was enjoyable, certainly, and definitely well-written and tightly-plotted. That being said, there was a definite turning point around the middle when I went from loving the novel, to slight and momentary confusion, before coming back around to enjoying it. I am, therefore, slightly conflicted about the book.

“The Litigators” by John Grisham (Hodder)

The latest legal thriller from the master of the genre

David Zinc has it all: big firm, big salary, life is in the fast lane.

Until the day he snaps and throws it all away.

Leaving the world of corporate law far behind, he talks himself into a new job at Finley & Figg. A self-styled ‘boutique’  firm with only two partners, Oscar Finley and Wally Figg are ambulance-chasing street lawyers who hustle nickel-and-dime cases, dreaming of landing the big win.

For all his Harvard Law Degree and five years with Chicago’s top firm, Zinc has never entered a courtroom, never helped a client who really needed a lawyer, never handled a gun.

All that is about to change.

Ever since I read Grisham’s The Brethren over a decade ago, I’ve been a big fan of the author’s work. I’ve tried to read as many of his new releases as possible (one day I’ll probably try his YA thrillers), as well as catch up with his back catalogue (to date, I’ve managed to read 15 of them). There have been very few disappointments, and each new novel I’ve found addictive and engaging. In fact, there’s only been one Grisham novel that I’ve not been able to finish (The Street Lawyer), despite trying to read it twice. I have no idea why I can’t get into that one. Anyway, with The Litigators, Grisham is on good form and, despite a second-half wobble, I was not disappointed; it was a very enjoyable read.

2010: A Retrospective – Thrillers

The top five thrillers published in 2010 that I’ve read

The year hasn’t been one filled with much thriller-reading for me. Those that I did read didn’t always excite my passion for the genre, and there were some disappointments. To make sure the notable ones are mentioned, however, here are the five that really stood out, in no particular order:

Matthew Reilly, Five Greatest Warriors (Orion)

Jesse Kellerman, The Executor (Sphere)

Joseph Finder, The Vanished (Headline)

Mark Gimenez, The Accused (Sphere)

John Grisham, The Confession (Century)

*     *     *

A (longer) post highlighting the top fantasy and science-fiction novels that I read in 2010 will follow very shortly…

“The Confession”, by John Grisham (Century)

An innocent man is days from execution. Only a guilty man can save him.

Travis Boyette is a murderer. In 1998, in the small East Texas city of Sloan, he abducted, raped, and strangled a popular high-school cheerleader. He buried her body so that it would never be found, then watched and waited as police and prosecutors arrested Donte Drumm, a local football star with no connection to the crime. Tried, convicted and sentenced, Drumm was sent to death row: his fate had been decided.

Nine years later, Donte Drumm is four days from execution. Over 400 miles away in Kansas, Travis faces a fate of his own: an inoperable brain tumour will soon deliver the end. Reflecting on his miserable life, he decides to do what’s right. After years of silence he is ready to confess.

But how can a guilty man convince lawyers, judges and politicians that they’re about to execute an innocent man?

Each new Grisham novel is an event, and it was with considerable anticipation that I bought The Confession. After the slightly disappointing The Associate I was somewhat anxious that the author had lost his touch, but as I quickly discovered, this couldn’t be further from the truth. The Confession is classic Grisham, and I was quickly swept up by the narrative, getting through the novel in two short and one very long sitting (insomnia can sometimes have its benefits…).

Boyette’s confession to Keith Schroeder, a Kansas Lutheran pastor, happens within a mere handful of pages, as the terminally ill career-sex-offender walks into the minister’s office and confesses that Donte Drumm has been wrongly convicted of murder. The title’s confession is, however, two-fold –it also refers to Drumm’s confession, which was obtained after twelve hours of cruel and deceitful interrogation by a small cadre of thuggish cops, and is widely accepted as the sole reason he was convicted and received the death penalty, not to mention the reason his appeals have been routinely rejected. It’s difficult not to feel angry with both Boyette for his cowardice, dithering and generally repugnant character, and also the racist cops and the broken criminal justice system portrayed in the novels.

There are some elements to the novel that many might consider tired tropes of American crime/legal fiction. For example, it’s set in Texas, and the subject is a wrongly-accused African-American convicted of killing a white cheerleader – this is hardly an original backdrop for a novel (Grisham himself used a similar plotline in A Time To Kill). What makes Grisham’s novel so much more than others, is what he does with this plot, and the story he weaves around it.

Robbie Flak, Drumm’s slightly-crazy, driven lawyer, is a great character. After an already highly colourful career storming every barn and fighting every case he could involving any kind of social-injustice he perceived, he has spent the last nine years defending Drumm, attempting every avenue available to him to exonerate his client. Keith Schroeder, the minister Boyette turns to for help and guidance, plays a bigger role, and Grisham gives him a good amount of personal struggle as he decides on whether or not to help Boyette break his parole in order to remedy an ever greater injustice. Drumm, also, is a complex character, resigned to his fate and broken down by the system that has utterly failed him.

This novel starts with much more bang than Grisham’s previous novel (see my review of that, here). From the opening chapter with Boyette and the minister, not to mention the chapter that introduces us to Flak and his colourful career, Grisham appears to be back to his best. I was hooked immediately, and as the author gave us more and more information and background on the arrest, coerced confession, the case and eventual sentencing, I was on tenterhooks, eager to just keep reading and find out if Boyette, Schroeder and Flak were able to stop the execution.

Along with the thriller tale, The Confession is a passionate, intelligent (if narrow-in-scope) indictment of the death penalty in the United States (see also: The Chamber), and Grisham delves into every facet of this issue – managing not to preach, while giving the reader plenty of grist for the mill. One particularly good scene is about the cost of death penalty cases, and one of the ironies of Texas: pro-death penalty but notably anti-tax, most Texans have no clue how much a capital case actually costs them in taxpayer money: $400,000 is the estimated pay received by the fictional team, but from start-to-finish, it apparently costs $2million to execute someone in Texas, compared to $30,000 per year for life imprisonment. It does present a rather fiscally-conservative option. (The author’s note at the end of the novel does admit that there may be some slight flaws or errors in the numbers.)

The bluntest indictment (in a scene that already overflows with contempt for the practice and the Texas system) comes from a quietly fatalistic Drumm, on the morning of his scheduled day of execution:

“There’s nothing we can do. When Texas wants to kill somebody, they’re gonna do it. Killed one last week. Got another planned later this month. It’s an assembly line around here, can’t nobody stop it. You might get lucky and get a stay every now and then... but sooner or later your time is up. They don’t care about guilt or innocence... all they care about it showing the world how tough they are. Texas don’t fool around. Don't mess with Texas.”

The metaphor of it being an “assembly line” puts me in mind of the darker ‘jokes’ about George W. Bush’s tenure as Governor of Texas, when there were so many executions that they brought in an electric-couch, rather than -chair, to get things moving quicker. Governor Newton of this novel is portrayed as a cold, heartless bastard only concerned with his future political plans, uninterested in justice and focussed only on his own, narrow self-interests.

A masterful storyteller, Grisham is unafraid to wrench the carpet out from under his readers. This is not an easy read, and it’s not happy. It’s a harsh, passionate indictment of capital punishment. It’s an imperfect argument, but recognises itself as such – something that pro-death penalty lobbyists seem incapable of doing for their own side of the argument. Once again, Grisham is able to take such an important, divisive issue and lay it bare, unafraid of the effect it will have on the reader, all the while wrapping it in a gripping, edge-of-your-seat thriller.

I’m not often moved by novels, certainly not recent/modern ones you’d find on “popular fiction” shelves, but this novel certainly did move me, as I became quite invested in Drumm’s fate. The pacing of the plot ensures this, as do the forces arrayed against him. I can’t imagine anyone coming away from reading this novel unaffected.

The pacing of the final quarter of the novel dropped a bit, as Grisham tied up loose ends and brought events to a close – allowing, of course, for more cynical and damning portrayals of politicians and the Texan political process. After the emotional rollercoaster of the first 75% of the novel, this was a little disappointing, but it remained an enjoyable read.

In a year when I haven’t been much moved or taken by new thrillers, The Confession stands out as one of the best novels of the year, certainly in this genre, and one of the author’s best novels.

Brilliant, gripping, superbly written, this is classic Grisham and can stand proudly with the best of his novels.

Highly recommended.

Books on Film: “The Runaway Jury”, by John Grisham

Can a jury be manipulated or bought? At what cost?

I’m on a bit of a Grisham kick at the moment (I’ll review his latest, The Confession, as soon as I get it read), and I recently watched The Runaway Jury, so I thought I’d add another to my recent “Books on Film” series.

First, the book’s blurb:

Every jury has a leader, and the verdict belongs to him.

In Biloxi, Mississippi, a landmark trial with hundreds of millions of dollars at stake begins routinely, then swerves mysteriously off course. The jury is behaving strangely, and a least one juror is convinced he’s being watched. Soon they have to be sequestered. Then a tip from an anonymous young woman suggests she is able to predict the juror’s increasingly odd behaviour.

Is the jury somehow being manipulated, or even controlled? If so, by whom? And, more importantly, why?

A synopsis of the movie:

Based on Grisham’s bestselling The Runaway Jury, the ultimate target has been changed: Grisham’s legal assault on the tobacco industry has been switched to the hot-button issue of gun control (no doubt to avoid comparisons with The Insider) in a riveting exposé of jury-tampering.

Gene Hackman plays the ultra-cynical, utterly unscrupulous pawn of the gun-makers, using an expert staff and advanced electronics to hand-pick a New Orleans jury that will return a favourable verdict; Dustin Hoffman (making his first screen appearance with real-life former roommate Hackman) defends the grieving widow of a gun-shooting victim with idealistic zeal, while maverick juror John Cusack and accomplice Rachel Weisz play both ends against the middle in a personal quest to hold gun-makers accountable.

Given the talents involved in the movie, it is of course great, and it would be almost impossible to expect any less from this crew and cast. Everyone involved in the movie brings their A-game, and even the lesser characters are great actors and expertly portrayed.

The Runaway Jury, the seventh Grisham to be made into a movie, focuses on the gun business in America, rather than the tobacco industry of the novel. As the synopsis suggests, this might have been a ploy to distance the movie from The Insider, which came out roughly at the same time (and is, actually, another excellent movie). Like all the movies based on Grisham novels, it’s great viewing and intelligent. The plot comes along at a fair clip, unfolding for the viewer at a perfect pace to keep us guessing and engrossed. However, given the level of detail one would expect in a Grisham novel, one can’t help feeling the plot unfolds just a tad too quickly in the movie, and as a result I’m convinced the novel would be an eminently more satisfying endeavour.

While I am mostly against the gun culture and trade in the US (at least, and admittedly, the politicised element of it), I find the idea of suing a gun company over the death of a family member a little strange. The case is attempting to show that the Vicksburg Gun Company has a “deliberate and negligent” distribution policy/process. Surely this is a different issue? Sure, they made the gun – but that’s legal (even if it does have a “print-resistant finish”). Sure, a lot of their policies and business strategies are predatory and completely mercantilist – could we expect different from any other company? (Certainly not US banks, as we’ve discovered in the past couple of years...) It’s a question of responsibility, and who has the ultimate responsibility of what is done with a company’s products, specifically firearms. That is the central focus of the movie. I agree that in the case of controlled products like firearms, tobacco, alcohol, the vendor has a responsibility and, depending on reward schemes offered by the manufacturer, they also have a responsibility. The scenario offered in the movie is one so patently dishonest that a monkey should have been able to argue a win, and yet the case offered by Hoffman’s character seems a bit limp. In fact, the character isn’t written with much depth as far more focus goes to Hackman’s ‘bad-guy’. Fair enough, but Hoffman is a superb actor and it’s a pity his character wasn’t written more convincingly.

“Never before has a jury found the gun industry liable for murder.”

The sentiment of the movie is right: with entrenched and powerful gun interests in Washington, there’s no hope of changing the gun industry without a huge, sensational case like this. Congress won’t change anything, because of the clout of the NRA. A court case can start the ball rolling, it can send it through to the Supreme Court. But even then, there’s no guarantee – it’s far more politicised than one hopes or would prefer.

I must admit, I’ve not read the novel (yet), and after watching the movie, I find myself unsatisfied with the conclusions it comes to. Not necessarily because I disagree with the conclusions, but because the medium doesn’t allow for as much depth as a novel. True, the ultimate target in the novel is different, so it would be interesting to see how the case against the tobacco industry unravels, and how the jury tampering fits in.

The stats are well known, the arguments against (certainly when compared to non-gun nations) are logical and clear. It’s an emotional issue that is argued too much by the Gut.

The movie as a whole is entertaining, as I’ve mentioned. But, even given its near-two-hour length, it feels a little too much like it is only skimming the surface of the issues. Naturally, one can expect this from a big-budget Hollywood movie, but it does raise questions on the viability of transitioning these types of novels into the film medium. It works as visual entertainment, but I imagine the novel has so much more to offer someone interested in the subject – or, at least, the subject of jury selection and tampering, rather than the gun trade (for which I would recommend Richard North Patterson’s The Balance of Power).

Well worth watching (Hackman, Hoffman, Cusak and Weisz are all brilliant), but don’t equate it too closely with Grisham’s novel or other written output.

Ten Years On: “The Brethren”, by John Grisham (Arrow/Doubleday)

A prison-based extortion scam hooks an unexpected, powerful fish

Trumble is a minimum-security federal prison, a “camp,” home to the usual assortment of relatively harmless criminals – drug dealers, bank robbers, swindlers, embezzlers, tax evaders, two Wall Street crooks, one doctor, at least five lawyers.

And three former judges who call themselves “the Brethren”: one from Texas, one from California, and one from Mississippi. They meet each day in the law library, their turf at Trumble, where they write briefs, handle cases for other inmates, practice law without a license, and sometimes dispense jailhouse justice. And they spend hours writing letters. They are fine-tuning a mail scam, and it’s starting to really work. The money is pouring in.

Then their little scam goes awry. It ensnares the wrong victim, a powerful man on the outside, a man with dangerous friends, and the Brethren’s days of quietly marking time are over.

I first read this novel when it was published in 2000. It was the first novel by Grisham that I ever read, and it set me on a two-month-long Grisham-marathon. Ten years after it first appeared, I thought it would be a good candidate for the first instalment of my ‘Ten Years On’ series.

There are basically two main storylines that run concurrently: that of the Brethren at Trumble, and Aaron Lake’s presidential primary campaign. It’s not stated how they connect, but one quickly figures it out (otherwise, there would clearly be no point in having them both in the same novel).

It’s pre-9/11, and the Cold War is still on people’s minds, not to mention the fear of a renewed war – cold or otherwise – with a frustrated Russia. This is the nightmare scenario CIA chief Teddy Maynard is trying to push into the American consciousness. Maynard wants a pliable president, one with the CIA and defence department’s interests at heart. Aaron Lake is the perfect candidate – squeaky clean, respected but not flashy, and a work horse on Congressional defence committees. The political side of this novel could be characterised as the military-industrial-complex meets Wag the Dog – a distillation of everything conspiracy theorists (and, increasingly, more-sane citizens) worry about the American democratic process – that is, secret moneyed interests in the defence industry buying the election for a candidate who sells his soul for cash and political fame. Only, it’s also as if the conspiracies about the military-industrial-complex are not only real, but they’re not big enough – the CIA is trying to pick a president, and they’ll engineer international events to prove him a foreign policy visionary, and in the end scare the American public into voting for him, in return getting their increased defence budgets and an eternal state of readiness.

Maynard is wonderfully Machiavellian. He embodies much of the contents and suggestions in The Prince, yet Grisham manages to keep him from becoming a cartoon. Lake comes across as the genuinely well-intentioned candidate who quickly becomes enamoured with the status and trappings of a political rising-star. The money is pouring into his campaign coffers in amounts as-yet unheard of (although, reading it now, the numbers are quite small compared to the 2008 election figures), and Lake is making the most of the political machine Maynard and company assemble for him. Everything is planned out – the ups and downs of Lake’s campaign, even the forthcoming general election. Everything will goes as planned. As long as there are no surprises, of course…

Meanwhile, the three judges at Trumble are working away at their mail scam, hoping to spend their remaining years of incarceration blackmailing older homosexuals still in the closet. Their scam is certainly cruel, and highlights the continued stigma attached to homosexuality in the US – even though things may have moved forward a little over the past decade, much of the sentiment described in the novel is the same as what one might hear coming out of Sarah Palin’s mouth. (Well, actually, what’s in The Brethren is far more tame than that.) When Grisham turns our attention to the judges’ victims, he deals with them in a very sympathetic way, as they struggle with the fear of their secrets being revealed.

The judges are angry at the world, and the idea for scam came from another prison and another time, when it was successfully carried out for years. There are times when the judges’ inherent concern for others does come through – particularly in the case of Buster, an extremely young prisoner sentenced to 48 years for a crime he not only didn’t commit, but had no way of committing. There is some balance between the judges – who have all the time in the world to scheme, and are surprisingly similar characters given their broad geographic origins – and their drunk attorney, who acts as their outside courier and money-man, a quite damaged character whose legal career has far from taken off.

Some things don’t change. In his announcement speech, Lake “became wonderfully angry at the Chinese”, and also “blistered the Chinese for their looting [of nuclear secrets] and their unprecedented military buildup. The strategy was Teddy’s. Use the Chinese to scare the American voters”, just as candidates on both sides of the aisle are doing today during the 2010 midterms. True, in the novel’s case, it's to distract from the activities of rogue Russian elements. Today, on the other hand, it’s to distract from US domestic problems.

The all-powerful forces of money behind politics are, as mentioned, a significant feature of the novel. Considering the recent Supreme Court ruling that officially opened up elections to seemingly endless amounts of corporate money, The Brethren was in many ways a prescient novel. The ability for corporations and special interests to buy elements of elections is frightening, and Grisham fully evokes the ease with which money can swing the course of American elections, and therefore politics as a whole.

I often forget how much social and political commentary Grisham can seamlessly cram into a novel (in just one chapter, for example, we get indictment of politics and the sorry state of daytime TV, for example). When I first read this, I missed a lot of the political commentary, not having had much exposure to US politics at the time (although, it was only a year before my professional interest in/obsession with it began). Second time around, and I know I got more out of this than before.

Despite my disappointment with The Associate, which I felt was based on a sloppy, shaky premise (and a little too transparent an attempt to recreate the feel of The Firm), Grisham remains one of the best authors writing today. Some may sneer, because he’s not producing “literature”, but his novels are original, intelligent, and exceptionally well-written and plotted thrillers.

All of Grisham’s characters are well-drawn and realistic – whether prominent in his novels or peripheral. The dialogue is natural, and the author’s prose flow perfectly. It was extremely difficult to put this novel down. Can one ask for anything more from a thriller? With a satisfying ending, The Brethren remains, for me, one of Grisham’s finest novels.

Highly recommended.

The Best of Grisham: A Time To Kill (1989), The Firm (1991), The Pelican Brief (1992), The Runaway Jury (1996), The Partner (1997), The Summons (2002), The King of Torts (2003), The Broker (2005), The Appeal (2008)

Artwork for the American 2000-edition, which I read first:

“The Associate”, by John Grisham (Arrow)

Blackmail and Corporate Espionage in the Big Apple, and a law-grad in over his head

Kyle McAvoy is one of the outstanding legal students of his generation: good looking, a brilliant and driven legal mind, and a future of endless possibility ahead of him.

He also has a secret from his undergraduate days, a secret that resurfaces and threatens to destroy his fledgling career even before it’s begun.

Kyle is confronted with a compromising video of the incident that haunts him. The men who show it to him make it clear to Kyle that they now control his future - that he must do as they tell him, or the video will be made public.

Strangely, the price they ask of Kyle is to do exactly what any ambitious young lawyer would want to do: take a job as a legal associate at the largest law firm in New York – a job that is fantastically well paid and, with mammoth hours and outrageous billing, could lead to partnership and a fortune. The catch is that Kyle won't be working for the firm, but against it – passing on secrets of the company's biggest trial to date to his blackmailers. The case is a dispute between two defence contractors, the outcome worth billions of dollars to the victor.

Kyle is caught between the forces manipulating him and the FBI, who would love to unmask the conspiracy. Will his intellect, cunning and bravery (and new-found love of spy-novels) be enough to save himself?

I’ve been a fan of John Grisham’s novels ever since I picked up The Brethren in New York. I burned my way through as many Grisham novels as I could lay my hands on. Most were excellent, gripping and entertaining (The Partner, The Broker, Time to Kill, The Pelican Brief – to name but a few). The occasional one or two weren’t (The Street Lawyer I had difficulty getting into, for example).

The Associate falls somewhere in the middle. Grisham’s writing is still superb, but this novel seriously falls down with the initial blackmail. The ‘evidence’ his blackmailers present Kyle with doesn’t implicate him at all. They even say so! The fact that Kyle agrees to do their bidding was ridiculous, and coloured my opinion of the book for quite a few more chapters. Such a clunky plot device from Grisham is especially disappointing.

After Kyle actually joins the firm in New York (which doesn’t happen that quickly), the novel improves a good deal, as our protagonist starts to think of ways to save himself. The interaction between Kyle and his handler is certainly interesting, as we get to see both sides of the bluffing – each thinks he has the upper hand by knowing something the other doesn’t, but it’s never entirely clear who really is in a better position.

A slower plot to unfold, and with a big problem at the beginning, The Associate is, nevertheless, a good read, and I found myself burning through the pages at a considerable rate, often reading well into the night and wee hours of the morning. There’s plenty of commentary on US legal practice and the life of law-graduates and the hellacious grind they’re put through upon taking a position at one of the mega-firms. The ending was sign-posted quite early on, and was a little obvious, but it’s still a good finish.

Not his best, but certainly still better than a lot of stuff out there. If you love Grisham already, you’ll certainly love this, reminiscent as it is of The Firm (in some ways, anyway).