Fiction Addict

Genre: Legal thriller

Publisher: Doubleday

Publication Date: January 2009

Reviewed by Jeremy Taylor

More than fifteen years after John Grisham first took the world of legal thrillers by storm, he hasn’t lost a step. The Associate is every bit as suspenseful and entertaining as The Firm, The Runaway Jury, The Street Lawyer, or any of the other 23 best-sellers he has penned over the years. While perhaps not as thrilling as The Firm or as evocative as The Last Juror or The Testament, this book is clearly the work of an excellent storyteller.

Kyle McAvoy is about to graduate from Yale Law School and head off for a year or two of public-service law work—doing his duty to society before entering the high-stakes, high-reward world of corporate law. But his plans change when he is contacted by a man claiming to be in possession of a video implicating Kyle in a crime that occurred years ago. The man threatens to release the video to the public, effectively squashing any chance of a successful legal career, unless Kyle joins a New York law firm and illegally feeds his contact inside information about a multibillion-dollar lawsuit. Kyle reluctantly agrees—but he has a hidden agenda of his own. If he can prove his innocence before actually breaking any laws, he just might be able to escape with his reputation intact. But the stakes are high; if he fails, he may forfeit not only his career but his life.

Interestingly (and probably unfortunately to some) The Associate has some elements that seem very familiar from previous Grisham books. The young lawyer slaving away for a faceless corporate behemoth, performing essentially mundane tasks for hundreds of thousands of dollars a year, forced against his will to do something that turns out to be financially profitable, trying to figure out how to buck the system and turn the tables on his conspirators—these storylines have all occurred in previous novels.

What John Grisham offers readers is not so much uniquely new stories as familiar-seeming stories with a unique twist. Few authors can pull this off without seeming stale and repetitious. Grisham succeeds, and his success is evident not only by the number of readers who continue to come back for more but by the entertainment value his books offer. The Associate is vintage Grisham. The familiar characteristics combine with enough new material—and just plain good writing—to make it absolutely entertaining.