The Associate
by John Grisham
|
List Price: Our Price: $1.49 You Save: $26.46 (95%) Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days Buy Used: from $0.01 (click here) Category: Book See more book details and other editions |
|---|
Book Reviews of The Associate
Book Review: The book John Grisham shouldn't have written
Summary: 2 Stars
Somebody should have stopped John Grisham the moment he came up with the idea for The Associate, because even the premise was bad. As additional nails in the coffin of this moribund book, the characters were flat, the writing lackluster, the logic flawed and the ending was so weak that when I finished reading the book, I actually turned to the following (blank) pages looking for an epilogue, an apology, SOMETHING to explain the complete lack of resolution.
The premise of this book is based on John Grisham's favorite theme: David and Goliath. Clever rookie lawyer (Kyle) challenges big law firm/nefarious government agency (pick your Goliath in this one)--and wins! Only in this case, the rookie lawyer isn't anyone we can really identify with (which completely defeats the purpose), we never find out who Goliath is, and I am still trying to figure out who won. Basically, the problem was that there was nothing in this book to hold the theme together.
Kyle, a top-ranked law student at Yale is blackmailed by a "thug" named Bennie into spying on the biggest law firm in the world. The confidential information he is supposed to pass on to Bennie concerns a lawsuit between two mega-corporations over a multi-billion dollar defense contract (involving the B-10 bomber which can fly half way across the world in one hour, dump a bomb or two and fly back without refueling). Supposedly, Kyle, a young associate just out of law school, will have access not only to the memos and other legal documents involved in the suit, but to the plans for the B-10 itself. Kyle, of course, has no choice but to betray his firm (and possibly his country) because the nefarious Bennie has a video that reveals Kyle's complicity in a rape--a charge which was dropped five years earlier, and which Kyle has never revealed to anyone.
The first problem with this plot was that Kyle did not appear on the video. Therefore, the video, while it did show two other guys having sex, did not implicate Kyle. Any defense lawyer could have gotten the charge thrown out on that basis alone way before it even hit a courtroom. But, without Kyle's all-too-contrived panic, the plot, such as it was, would not have worked. The second problem was that if Bennie and his goons were as professional as they are made out to be, why was it so easy for Kyle to lose his tails? Once maybe. But you'd think they'd catch on after losing Kyle repeatedly. (Supposedly, Kyle learns to outfox his handlers after reading cheap spy novels. Grisham was really reaching for it.) Obviously, the reason Kyle never got caught was that if he had, Grisham would not have been able to advance his painfully illogical plot.
But the major pitfall of this book is that Kyle comes across as a jerk. His feelings are entirely reserved for his "predicament," so there is no emotional depth to base his character on. He doesn't really care about his friends, and his girlfriend is just a body to have sex with (or "at"--I'm not sure about the "with" part). He never thinks anything through. Kyle is, in short, a rather shallow young man of limited intelligence and lax morals. The endless rationalizations of his past behavior are nauseating. Maybe he didn't actively rape the 17-year-old girl, but as the 20-year-old host he might have shown a shred of responsibility. (Out-of-control, drunken, frat orgies are not, as Grisham suggests, the easily forgiven, normal "hi-jinks" of "kids." People get killed during frat "parties.") Kyle endlessly repeats to himself, and to all others, that what happened to Elaine could not have been rape because 1) they were all drunk (but, apparently, this didn't affect the performance of the men), 2)the girl volunteered to come to the party, 3) the girl had slept with the guys before, 4) she was a "groupie" (i.e. a slut) and (later) she was "emotionally unstable" (supposedly because she eventually became a lesbian, which just proves she was "unbalanced"). Can a girl be raped if any or all of these conditions apply? Of course! And what is Kyle's reaction to the news that one of lawyers in the firm has been sacked because he put his girlfriend in the hospital, and then lied about his criminal record? "Poor Meade, ten years removed from his crime and hustling through the grind at $400,000 a year, when suddenly he gets a summons to a meeting with closed doors." (p 162) Apparently, if you are a high-paid lawyer, assault shouldn't be held against you. (What on EARTH was Grisham thinking when he wrote this?) The only halfway decent character in this book was Baxter, who Grisham introduces almost as an after-thought and then drops with equal ease for the sake of adding yet another pointless plot element--and because Baxter had a silly thing called a conscience (which was getting in Kyle's way).
But the biggest nail in The Associate's coffin was that it was impossible to care about any of the major players or what happened to them. The companies developing the bomber certainly didn't elicit any sympathy. (It is a proven fact of history that any technology, once invented, cannot be contained. In other words, if we build a bomber that can nuke China in a heartbeat, it won't be long before every kid on the block has one. And why would we want to nuke China in the first place?) And as for the greedy lawyers who lived and breathed billable hours, who cared if Kyle betrayed them? The FBI, the helpful criminal lawyer, Kyle's girlfriend, his dad...all these characters remained so thoroughly bland that Bennie and his thugs had no opposing "good guys" to counter-balance them. (Frankly, by the end of the book, I was rather hoping Kyle would get shot.)
Even the writing left a lot to be desired. Between short, choppy sentences, unfinished ideas, lackluster dialogue, huge plot holes and some truly horrendous stereotyping (a female "woman's issues" lawyer named "Mike"?), this book had very little going for it. If you are a Grisham fan, don't read this book. It's DOA.
Book Review: Compares Poorly to The Firm
Summary: 2 Stars
The Associate is further evidence that John Grisham's best legal thriller writing was in his early days. From the concept for the plot to the character development to the ending, this novel shouldn't get past the defense's request for summary judgment to dismiss the book without offering a defense of the request.
If you haven't already read The Firm, The Associate would almost come up to average level. I'm sure you have read The Firm (probably one reason why you picked up The Associate), and in every aspect of The Associate you'll wish you were reading The Firm.
Don't judge the book by its first 57 pages. Those pages are vivid, interesting, compelling, and will get your heart pumping. After that, it's all downhill . . . a long way down.
So what's it all about?
Kyle McAvoy is a third-year student at Yale Law School in New Haven, Connecticut where he's the star of the show as editor-in-chief of the Yale Law Review. Having grown up in Erie, Pennsylvania where his father runs a "serve-the-people" practice rather than a "take-the-peoples'-money" practice, McAvoy is planning to take a job as a poverty lawyer for 2-3 years.
Fate intervenes while McAvoy is coaching a youth league basketball game. The FBI wants to talk to McAvoy. Before the night is over, a series of events begin to unfold that make McAvoy a pawn in a game so big he cannot even imagine who the players might be. It's all tied up with a moment he would rather forget, even though he doesn't remember much about the moment through the mists of time and drunkenness.
As a result, McAvoy joins one of the nation's largest and highest paid firms, Scully & Pershing, as a litigation associate. Once there, he's abused, overworked, and bored to death like everyone else chasing the plum of a partnership. McAvoy has another boss, the mysterious Bennie who wants secrets from the firm . . . and will seemingly stop at nothing to get those secrets.
Can McAvoy do what's right and escape the clutches of Bennie? That's the primary suspense in the story.
Don't read any further if you think you might want to read the book. Let's start with the plot's premise in explaining the book's weaknesses. I could not imagine someone with McAvoy's legal background and status knuckling under to this kind of blackmail without getting help from professors and a father who is a lawyer. If McAvoy had asked for help, the plot would never have developed.
From there, the blackmail activity puts enormous resources into influencing one law student. That makes no sense. There had to be easier ways to steal the information. I've been in many of New York's largest law offices after hours, and the security wouldn't be hard to overcome.
The side plot of a college rape doesn't add anything to the story other than to make it disgusting to read. Surely, Mr. Grisham could have thought of something else to blackmail McAvoy for that wouldn't leave such a bad taste in the reader's mouth.
On the character side, I didn't find myself rooting very much for McAvoy. And the other characters weren't particularly sympathetic either except for Baxter Tate, just before he was murdered. The character development was modest at best. The only character which came alive for me as a person was McAvoy's father.
Let's face it. Large law firms are indescribably dull unless you happen to be assigned an interesting question to research. There's a reason for that. Young associates don't know enough about the law to do very many people any good, but they can do a lot of harm. Picking such a firm for the story gave Mr. Grisham a target to criticize . . . but not much of interest to write about. Based on my experiences with top New York lawyers and the associates who carry their brief cases around, the criticisms rang more hollow than true.
Having McAvoy play cat-and-mouse with Bennie and his merry men did provide a little amusement, but to me it just stretched out the story to little purpose.
The ending just felt like the book contract required that so many pages be written and that Mr. Grisham wanted to wrap it all up quickly. Obviously one of the partners was playing ball with Bennie . . . but why . . . and what did they hope to accomplish by involving McAvoy?
I suppose that I'm supposed to riddle over that set of questions (like The Lady or the Tiger?). I didn't riddle a bit because I didn't care who did what.
I think I'll wait to look at a few reviews in the future before I read any of Mr. Grisham's future legal thrillers.
Book Review: This is a disappointment
Summary: 2 Stars
People ask: How do you feel when you hear that ten lawyers drowned. They answer: It's a good start.
This joke could have been written by John Grisham whose best novels focus on the diabolical and unethical intrigues of large corrupt legal firms who take unfair advantage of people we come to like as we read his tale.
The associate Kyle McAvoy is the typical likable Grisham protagonist. He is in his early twenties, a bright aspiring lawyer, in his final year at Yale Law School, the editor of the Yale Law Journal, with the admirable goal of engaging in public service legal work for at least a couple of years after graduation, to help people who are financially strapped and unable to afford to hire a lawyer. He is facing the prospect of a brilliant future. But someone appears with a slight foreign accent, who calls himself Bennie, who has other plans for him. Bennie, or more precisely the people he works for, decides to use Kyle as a pawn, to aid them in winning a legal case involving hundreds of millions of dollars.
During his college years, in the midst of a drunken orgy, Kyle became involved in what may have been a rape. But he and we, the readers, wonder, was it a rape? Was he involved? And if so, how? We are drawn into the drama with these and other tantalizing and interesting questions.
Bennie blackmails Kyle, against his and his father's will, into joining one of two of the largest legal firms in the world. Kyle must illegally and unethically hand Bennie all the documents he desires. Kyle does not know who are Bennie's employers and their goal?
Bennie's coconspirators follow Kyle every minute. His apartment, telephone and computer are monitored by Bennie's team. Can Kyle escape the surveillance? Can he defeat Bennie and his unknown associates? Will Bennie publicize that Kyle was involved in a rape and destroy his future as a lawyer and land him in jail?
The drama introduces us to many interesting characters. There is a murder, of course. Kyle falls in love. All of this makes for a delightful read without the additional tale of how the legal firm functions. But, it is here that Grisham excels.
Grisham describes the ideal law firm as being "the cornerstone of democracy and the front lines for so many social conflicts." But the machinations of the world's largest law firm, the firm that Kyle is forced to join, are staggering and in no way similar to this ideal. The firm bills its clients $200 an hour for work that Kyle performs before he passes the Bar exam, and $400 an hour after he passes. He is taught by the firm how to lie about the hours spent and pad his bills. He and a senior partner who bills $800 an hour, for example, have a social lunch at an expensive restaurant unrelated to any case the firm is handling, and then bill a client for the meal and the two hours they spent eating. They are stealing $2,400 from the firm's client for the two hours plus a couple of hundred dollars for the meal and two bottle of expensive wine.
The law firm insists that its lawyers bill as many hours as possible. Some of the lawyers do not go home and sleep at their desk. The lawyers work close to 80 hours a week at the office and an associate occasionally hits a hundred hours. As a result, firm lawyers have a 72 percent divorce rate.
Reading Grisham's novel one wonders whether the atrocious legal system that he portrays is widespread, and, if so, should our country somehow try to reduce litigation. Lawyers did not exist in the early Judeo-Christian culture or among most ancient societies. If people had a dispute, they were expected to argue their own case without help of an uninvolved paid paladin.
Many ancient societies turned to God to resolve litigation. If a woman was suspected of adultery she was tossed into water. If she survived, then "obviously" God was declaring her innocent. This is barbaric; but is it worse than the legal system that Grisham portrays?
Grisham's new novel has two problems. First, the theme of the overbearing large law firm is the same theme of his earlier works. If someone else wrote his first books, even the law firm he portrays would have been unable to defend him against the charge of plagiarism. Second, as usual Grisham does not end his mystery well. Leaving the resolution of a single issue obscure is fine; it provokes thought and the reader can write his or her own ending. However to leave the resolution of every single issue unresolved is nothing less than writing half a novel; it is not thought provoking; it is annoying.
[...].
Book Review: Great thriller 'associates' with a real-life question.
Summary: 4 Stars
Five years ago, young Duquesne student Kyle McAvoy made a crucial mistake; he was at the wrong place at the wrong time. The place was his own apartment, where a wild party took place and two of his fraternity brothers were involved in a sexual act with an underage groupie named Elaine Keenan. After heavily drinking and smoking weed, Elaine drifted in and out of consciousness during the sex act, then cried rape a few days later.
The police investigated but was unable to build a case against the fraternity bothers due to the fact that Elaine had no physical evidence of rape and she was known to be a drug user and extremely promiscuous.
After graduating from college Kyle and his friends worked hard to forget the incident and move on with their lives. Fraternity brother Baxter, with a rich family backing him up, moved to Los Angeles to become a Hollywood star and Joey Bernardo, another Beta-brother, went ahead with a career in the stock market.
At present time Kyle finishes his law degree at Yale and just before he takes his bar exam the past finally catches up with him. He is contacted by a shady character named Bennie Wright, who first introduces himself as an investigator, but soon turns out to be an operative heavily involved in corporate espionage. A video tape of the alleged rape is shown to Kyle and, though he never touched the girl that particular evening, the scene happened in Kyle's apartment nonetheless, and Kyle is in the picture as one of the drunken fools earlier that night. Where does this video come from, five long years after this fateful event?
Kyle doesn't know and it doesn't matter. What matters is, however, that his world suddenly comes to a screeching halt. If given to Elaine Keenan's attorney, the video could do incredible damage to Kyle and his Beta-brother's lives and careers. Kyle's plans, after passing the bar exam, had consisted of doing pro bono work for the underprivileged but Benny's blackmail changes those charitable plans drastically. Kyle is forced to take a job in New York City's biggest law firm and spy for Bennie on a high profile law suit the Pentagon is somehow involved in.
He involuntarily enters dangerous terrain when he prepares a path littered with criminal mischief, while trying to survive the pressure of being a first-year associate in a law firm that many of his co-workers compare with a meat grinder. Planned a career in law, now Kyle is breaking the law and if caught would face jail time and disbarment for life. Bennie's video could do similar damage, however, and Kyle finds himself in a sticky situation without much choice.
While trying to get to the truth behind ominous Bennie Wright, Kyle omits and prepares his career to be soiled by corporate espionage. Soon, things take an even uglier turn when one of Kyle's fraternity brothers is brutally murdered.
Desperately fighting against the clock and pressured by lethal criminals, Kyle's only way out seems to be to confide in his father, a lawyer with his own firm, tucked away in small town Pennsylvania. Besides the obvious embarrassment of telling his father he is an accused rape accomplice, can Kyle outwit a dangerous league of professional operatives all the while covering his tracks as on of New York City's biggest law firm's associate?
John Crisham shines in his latest thriller The Associate. The enticing story of corporate espionage, blackmail and murder won't allow you to put this book down until the last page is turned. Crisham gives the reader a glimpse of the work of young associates with its insane pressure and long hours. But what makes this story 'real' is his nudge to think about a serious 'real-life' question: When does sex become rape?
I thoroughly enjoyed The Associate, as I did most of Crisham's work. However, I only recommend this book to readers who can dedicate the few hours it takes to zip through this thriller. Don't pick it up thinking you will finish it later. It won't work.
Rebecca Lerwill, author of the award-winning romantic thriller
Relocating Mia
Book Review: Vintage John Grisham
Summary: 5 Stars
Through the course of nearly two decades of writing and the publication of 22 books, John Grisham has been a perpetual occupant of a top position on the New York Times bestseller list. While recognized by most as the author of courtroom fiction, Grisham has frequently deviated from those sagas that have made him famous. In 2006, he delved into the world of true crime, writing THE INNOCENT MAN: Murder and Injustice in a Small Town. On occasion he has ventured far from the courthouse and the law with novels such as BLEACHERS and PLAYING FOR PIZZA. Regardless of the subject, however, a bestselling book always seems to be the end result of his hard work.
Grisham has achieved his greatest success inside the fictional courtroom where his novels fall into two categories. Some concentrate almost exclusively on the law. A TIME TO KILL, THE RAINMAKER and THE APPEAL spend countless pages in the courtroom and revolve around important legal issues that he wants readers to contemplate. Others are less courtroom-focused and more mystery-centered with lawyers simply being the spotlight of the plot. In THE FIRM, THE CLIENT and THE BROKER, the protagonists could have been non-attorneys without any major impact on the novels.
THE ASSOCIATE, Grisham's latest masterpiece, reached the top 10 of Amazon purchases prior to its publication and is a certain New York Times bestseller. It is one of Grisham's pseudo-courtroom mysteries. Because he is constantly writing new novels, he is able to follow plot lines that often capture the news of the moment. Here, he mixes events reminiscent of the Duke University lacrosse players' scandal with equal parts of Wall Street lawyer misbehavior and a large portion of industrial espionage, all coming together to create the quintessential page-turning thriller that readers have come to expect from Grisham.
Kyle McAvoy is an idealistic Yale Law School graduate who has decided to forsake the wealth and power of a high-powered law firm for the altruistic work of a legal aid attorney. But McAvoy has an ugly past that he desperately wants to hide. That skeleton in his closet provides an easy target for blackmailers who have a far different career path in mind for the brilliant Ivy League graduate. McAvoy is confronted with his past by men whose identity and employer are a mystery, but their task is clear. They are to recruit McAvoy to be a conduit for information about a major lawsuit that focuses on important weapons systems developed by the Department of Defense. In order to accomplish this nefarious task, McAvoy must first accept the offer to join the Wall Street law firm that will represent one of the defense contractors involved in the litigation.
In his writing, Grisham has never shied away from using his books to reflect upon what he considers to be the shortcomings of the American legal system. From the death penalty to the buying of judicial elections and other stops along the way, Grisham often pinpoints what he believes to be deficiencies in the law. In THE ASSOCIATE, the treatment (or perhaps mistreatment) of young lawyers as fodder for income generation is highlighted by Grisham. As McAvoy works his way through the torture of a first-year associate at Scully and Pershing, the 100-hour work weeks, client billing excesses and a money-at-all-costs attitude are described in excruciating detail. But that behavior is only the background to McAvoy's battle to expose the men who would destroy his legal career in order to gain an advantage in the weapons market.
THE ASSOCIATE is vintage John Grisham. Some of the plot twists and turns require a suspension of disbelief by readers, but that is an easily accomplished task. You begin a Grisham title and several hours later confront a serious dilemma. Do I put the book down to get some sleep, or do I keep reading? The answer for me is to continue reading. Grisham has that ability to keep you turning the pages until the thrilling conclusion of yet another masterful effort.
--- Reviewed by Stuart Shiffman