The Associate
by John Grisham
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Book Reviews of The Associate
Book Review: Absolutely enjoyed this novel...
Summary: 5 Stars
I read some of the reviews before I read this book to try and get a feel for it and from what I was reading I was like "uh oh", I hope this isn't a Grisham bomb!! Thankfully this book IS NOT near as bad as other make it out to be. It's actually not bad at all. This was a very fast paced book that was written precisely for the movies, which is not at all surprising since they announced the actors for the movie before they even released this book. Strange. Grisham truly has his own style and it's evident throughout. The ins and outs of a law firm, some background on the legal profession, the stories intertwined around the law, and the clever smart-alec law student.
If you read books like I do and take it at face value, then you'll enjoy this story. If you read fiction (hence the keyword "fiction") and for have a need to say "wait, that can't happen", or "that doesn't make sense", then you won't like this book. Situations happen in this book that might be hard to believe but they are far from impossible. All fiction is based, in part, on some fact and that makes for an intriguing story line. Two companies that were partners are now bitter enemies due to a joint government project gone bad. And since this is good old America... THEY SUE! But this story goes so far beyond litigation. This deal is the richest in history and since money is the root of all evil... both sides pull out all the stops to get the upper hand and the methods they use would make a San Francisco liberal blush! :-) Well it would!
They will blackmail, extort, lie, build, spend, recruit, hire, hide, spy, plant, harass, follow, and kill to get the job done. Our friend Kyle, unfortunately, will see pretty much every single one of these tactics up close and personal. He handles the stress much better than I would think possible. In the course of this story Kyle has to deal with: trying to graduate, studying for the bar, getting blindsided by a bogus rape charge that he thought was gone, "selling out" to his friends and family, FORCED to take a job he knew he would hate, and having his freedom stripped away. How about that for a graduation present? It gets so bad that Kyle even says he can't remember that last time he's even though about sex. WOW! I don't think my life has ever been that bad. Hehehehehehehe!
I think a lot of the flack John is receiving is because this book does read like a fast action legal thriller. But that's because it is. Since the rights to the movie were released before the book I'm guessing that it was partly written as a screenplay. Either way I loved this book and had a lot of fun reading it. Although I have enjoyed all of Grisham's books, I think this one was the most entertaining I've read since `The Broker'. I have no doubt that you'll enjoy this one as well.
Book Review: Perhaps the publisher accidentally printed an unfinshed copy?
Summary: 3 Stars
The Associate had great potential. Kyle McAvoy was a very likable character. The plot was excellent. But the whole story flopped. It felt to me like I was reading an abridgment or a "made-for-TV" version where 1/2 the story is cut out. Grisham could have easily added another 100 pages to this book - there were a number of things he could have expanded on.
The basic plot is about a young man getting ready to graduate from law school who is blackmailed by something that happened in his past that he's not even guilty of. He is forced to work for a law firm for the purpose of stealing documents.
At points, this book brought back memories of The Firm, another Grisham book with a slightly similar plot.
This book was really a flop and the ending left a lot to be desired. It's almost like Grisham had written the overall plot and the publisher took it before he could expand on it.
I would have liked to have seen:
- more interaction between Kyle and other people in the firm - maybe he finds out that there is much more going on than meets the eye. We're introduced to several of the new employees - Tabor and Tim Reynolds, but they have virtually no part in the story.
- when Kyle met with Roy and Roy invites the FBI, I was expecting them to be working for Bennie - add in an element of "who can I trust?"
- some type of a chase scene where Kyle is trying to run from Bennie/Bennie's goons.
There were a lot of unexplained things - like why was it significant that Kyle drive the partners to a court hearing, and then the court hearing is canceled? What about Kyle getting promoted and getting his own office? Nothing ever happened in the office.
It was kinda of odd how Kyle kept hinting that Bennie was working for the government and would not be in any database. Why didn't Grisham expand on this?
Most of the characters are flat - The only two developed are Kyle and Baxter. Dale goes from this mysterious unknown person to Kyle's partner just like that. Her character is not developed at all, and then she suddenly announces that she's quitting (and then shortly thereafter Kyle resigns and they live happily after).
And there are some very unlikely events - when they kill Baxter, Kyle doesn't even bring it up at the next meeting, and neither does Bennie. That's inconceivable. Also, it seems very unlikely that the computers in that super secure room would even have a USB port - if they idea was to design it so that it was super secure, then it would not have a USB port. Even more, most likely the only visable part of the computer would be the monitor and keyboard. I just could not picture someone hooking up a device of any size into a USB port without being very obvious.
Book Review: Starts Off Great; Disappointing Overall
Summary: 3 Stars
The Associate is the latest legal thriller from John Grisham. It was released in January 2009, and is his seventeenth legal thriller and twenty-second book to be published since 1989.
The Associate starts off fervently. The first four chapters grab the reader into a seemingly hopeless encounter between the protagonist, Kyle McAvoy, and a mysterious stranger named Bennie who knows everything about Kyle's past, including Kyle's potentially life-altering activities at a frat party five years earlier. Grisham unexpectedly turns the plot around at the end of the fourth chapter. As with all of Grisham's thrillers, the plot of The Associate, is very clever and could only have been created by a former attorney.
The book is typical Grisham with a lot of emphasis on the aspects of working for a big law firm. One difference in this book compared to Grisham's other legal thrillers is that this one is set in New York City. Most of Grisham's other legal thrillers, with the except of The Street Lawyer, The King of Torts, and The Broker, were set somewhere in the southern United States.
Whereas the first four chapters were riveting, I found the rest of the book moved too slowly. Not too much happens for the rest of the book. I kept waiting for something to happen that would grab my attention and interest. But the remaining 22 chapters are comprised mostly of meetings between Kyle and Bennie and between Kyle and former frat buddies. There was very little tension after these initial chapters.
There were also several scenes that didn't add much to the plot and which were confusing. For example, at one point Kyle is asked to drive two partners in the law firm to a meeting somewhere in lower Manhattan. We already knew that the partners and associates at the firm had 24/7 access to a limousine service and, in fact, in the following chapter Kyle makes use of this service for the second time in the novel. So why was he asked to drive these partners to their meeting? Why didn't they take a limo? That didn't make sense to me.
Overall this book is a very easy read. But after the fourth chapter the plot fails to sustain itself. The ending is especially disappointing as loose ends that are created throughout the book are not resolved.
I love John Grisham's books -- I've read all of them. I've read a couple of them twice. And while this one has a very clever initial plot, I found it to be a bit disappointing. If you like Grisham you'll enjoy this book. If you're new to Grisham I suggest starting with one of his earlier works, especially The Brethren or The Partner (my two personal favorites).
See all my book reviews at http://kmsbookreviews.blogspot.com/
Book Review: Kyle McAvoy is no Mitch McDeere... 2.5 stars
Summary: 3 Stars
I loved The Firm. Years after a bookseller urged me to read it, I still re-read it. Alas, with a few exceptions (The Runaway Jury, even The Bretheren), John Grisham has failed to follow through on that early promise.
What we have is a washed-out half-version of what made The Firm so great. Instead of McDeere discovering the corruption that lies underneath the surface, everything is spelled out for the reader, in painstaking and painful detail. From the get-go, we know every detail of what McAvoy's plight is and so the only question is how he will extricate himself from it. (This being Grisham, there is little doubt that he will in one way or another.)
The problems with the plot is particularly acute because we don't read Grisham for either the language or his attention to character development. (In this outing, most of the characters feel like cardboard cutouts.) And beginning with the central premise of the plot -- that the dark secret in McAvoy's past is so ugly that he would rather risk being fired, disbarred and imprisoned for stealing the firm's secrets -- the whole novel rests on rather flimsy ground. I found that core premise completely implausible, to put it mildly. It's not as if McAvoy wanted to practice law in a venue where his own bystander role in the events -- no spoilers! -- would actually hurt him. The various twists and turns from that point onward were perfunctory, and the conclusion was downright offensive to readers. No, not in the sense of violence, vulgarity, etc, but in the sense of offending our intelligence. Suddenly, the forces against which McAvoy is battling just... evaporate. He is free to move on to a new life.
Nor does Grisham offer anything fresh in the backdrop. He has drawn pictures of life in big law firms before, the grind of trying to make it to partnership, and parts of the book devoted to life in the law firm are just predictable and tedious. Indeed, this is a very un-thrilling thriller.
Critics talk about actors "dialing in" a performance, when they are present on the stage but not in spirit. That's pretty much what Grisham has done in the literary sphere with this book. I gave it 2.5 stars simply because it wasn't so painful to read that I couldn't make to the end, and I wanted to see how Grisham got his characters to the painfully apparent conclusion. But this will be my final contribution to Grisham's royalty stream. From now on, if I read any of his books, it will be second-hand paperback copies. There are plenty of other good writers out there who don't have Grisham's profile and who really work to earn their readers' attention and loyalty. Grisham doesn't. And loyalty -- or lack of it -- cuts both ways.
Book Review: Unsatisfyingly 'un-climactic', like there is a sequel in there someplace
Summary: 3 Stars
Reminiscent of The Firm: A Novel, but without the drama, and with too many loose ends that are left dangling, no real sense of closure, and with a hint that Grisham may just be working on a sequel here. Otherwise this is simply not among Grisham's better works.
Kyle is about to graduate from the Yale Law School, and wants to go do public service in the legal field, but is forced to go work with a big Wall Street law firm instead, that pays $200k a year, and bills $200 an hour, and then $400 after he passes his bar exam. Why? Because a grainy video has been unearthed that could bring heaps of trouble and unwanted publicity upon him, and pretty much ruin his life for a several years if not outright send him to jail. This video has been unearthed by some not-so-good people who want him to spy for them in a huge multi-billion dollar lawsuit involving the largest defense deal in US history and involving two very large defense contractors. These blackmailers are very sinister, very thorough, with deep pockets, and very anonymous. Kyle has to agree to these blackmailers, try and not break every ethics and legal law in the land, and also try and figure a way out of this mess, without actually spending the next seven years of his life doing the blackmailers' biddings.
Grisham does a very good job of describing the drudgery, the sheer rat-race that every one is involved in at these law firms, and the very uncool reality of wall street legal work. Yet the lure of the lucre and the allure of the Wall Street law firms attracts thousands every year to this meat grinder. Thrown in is a nice contrast with the real-life street legal work that Kyle's father has been doing. The matter of fact way that overbilling happens, and how a two hour lunch meeting between two lawyers is billed to a client, even though not a word about the client is discussed, how more than five hours of sleep is a luxury among associates, and so on are all thrown into the mix. This corruption of the legal system is something that he covered in The Appeal.
The pace of the novel never really really picks up, staying pretty much the same towards the very end, so you don't quite get a sense of a climax to the plot. It potters on throughout, and it just ends. It is really Grisham's style of writing and about characters that keep you going.
If you are not a Grisham fan, this book may well rate one or two stars.