The Associate -- John Grisham

It had been a while since I picked up a book authored by John Grisham.  He had been a favorite of mine some ten years ago, when I first discovered him, and I read this particular novel during vacation time last November when I was visiting family.  I missed some of his books in between - seven of them to be exact, since the last one I read was The Summons so many years ago.  It was interesting to get back to him after so long a time; I was curious to see if he still featured high in my list of must-read authors.

The story is that of a bright young man with a promising future, Kyle McAvoy, who finds himself, much to his dismay, at the receiving end of a blackmail proposition -- he is offered a 200,000-dollars-a-year job, by a mysterious man named Bennie Wright, which he has no way of refusing because of a black episode during his college years is in danger of being aired in public.   A young woman, Elaine, claims that she was raped by four of his friends at a party so many years ago and there is a cellphone footage that implies the same in Bennie's possession.  She does not know of the existence of this video as of now, but there is a high likelihood of her receiving a copy of it if Kyle does not comply with Bennie's wishes.

In short, Kyle is hired to become a corporate spy for Bennie.  He is to feed Bennie all details about the firm he joins as a new associate, Scully & Pershing.  He enlists his old room-mates' help, the same guys implicated in the rape, in order to outsmart Bennie.  Complications arise when the college episode threatens to become public and Kyle's job position is threatened, thus endangering Bennie's plans.  Murder eventually follows. 

In addition, Kyle has been influenced by his father's philosophies of having a real practice that actually helped the needy.  This about-turn takes Kyle's father by surprise, and he suspects his son is in trouble.  He digs up the real reason for this sudden change on his own and tries to help his son get out of this situation.  Eventually, through Kyle's own presence of mind and his father's behind-the-scenes interference, he manages to extricate himself from the whole thing.

When I first got into this book, it smacked so much of The Firm that I kept looking back at the publishing details to ensure that this was actually the latest Grisham novel.  It was a deja vu feeling.  The story itself is partly based on a true incident where a man apologizes to a girl for raping her at a frat party, but Mr Grisham handles it with the same old style of his other books.  There is no freshness to the plot and above all, no closure.  The ending was rather sudden and flat.

Perhaps the movie achieves what the book doesn't.  I guess I've simply outgrown Grisham books.  It will be a long time before I pick any more up, since I get better and fresher books to read at the moment.