The Associate » (Unabridged)

The master of the legal thriller, John Grisham was a criminal and civil lawyer in Mississippi when his first book, A Time to Kill, was published. But it was his next book, The Firm, that became a blockbuster and established him as king of the genre.

It's a deadly game of blackmail. And they're making him play. Kyle McAvoy is one of the outstanding legal students of his generation with a glittering future ahead of him. But he has a secret that threatens to destroy his fledgling career and, possibly, his entire life. One night that secret catches up with him in the form of some bad men in a dark alley - and they have a video of the incident that haunts him. Kyle no longer owns his own future - he must do as they tell him.

What price do they demand for Kyle's secret? Strangely, it is for Kyle to do exactly what any ambitious young lawyer would want to do: take a job in New York as an associate at the largest law firm in the world, a job that is incredibly well paid and could lead to partnership and a fortune. Only Kyle won't be working for the company, but against it. Will his intellect, cunning and bravery be enough to extricate him from an impossible dilemma?

The Barnes & Noble Review

You might think that John Grisham's 22nd book, The Associate, has little chance of being any good. According to its jacket copy, it's practically a rewrite of his 1991 blockbuster, The Firm. Time magazine cheerfully dismissed it as "John Grisham's Charming Novel About Nothing." And the book's hand-wringing about the outrageous excesses of fancy Wall Street law firms seems, in this winter of our hardship, so suddenly last summer.

You might think all these things, but you would be wrong.