Firmaets mand (1991)

A real good novel and well written. Travel down a slippery slope with the Mafia and the FBI. Joining a rich law firm in Memphis starts the ball rolling from beginning to end. He has written many books that i have read. This is at the top. ( )

Mixed feeling about this one; to much repetitions of the same words (doubt the cause is limited vocabulary! ) but that felt strange. reads mostly like a movie rather than a book & maybe that is why it became one. Nonetheless these was something catchy about it. ( )

I guess that between them, this novel, and Scott Turow’s Presumed Innocent, may have created, or at least reinvented, the legal thriller. John Grisham certainly enjoyed immense success, becoming one of the highest selling novelists ever.

This was not his first novel, but it was the first to achieve any notable success. He had previously published A Time to Kill, which had initially sunk without trace, but following the success of The Firm and its successor The Pelican Brief, it was reissued to great acclaim.

Grisham’s style is direct. He does not dawdle for lengthy development of his characters, or for extravagant descriptions of the settings. The story is essentially plot driven. That is not a problem because his plots are pretty well put together.

In this instance, Mitchell (‘Mitch’) McDeere is about to graduate from Harvard Law School, almost at the top of his class, and is eagerly considering his employment options. Although he has been primarily considering Wall Street firms, he is approached by a medium sized firm from Memphis, who are offering considerably above the going rate, with a heavy package of employee benefits thrown in.

After some havering, Mitch decides to join and finds himself pitched into an intensive work and training programme, which sees him regularly working seventy or more hours per week. He is initially happy to maintain this ferocious workload, although he does start to wonder about some unusual aspects of the new firm. It is at that point that he is approached by an FBI Special Agent, who advises him that the firm is a front for organised crime, and that once he has worked there for a while, he will have inadvertently become so heavily involved in money laundering that he has no choice but to continue, and become afully paid up associate of The Mob. The Special Agent tells him about some of his predecessors who have discovered the truth about the firm the hard way, and who have been murdered when they sought to leave. It is immediately clear that Mitch has to choose between continuing to

The remainder of the book recounts Mitch’s struggles to come to terms with the truth of his situation, and to consider how he might extricate himself from his predicament. It is all very competently put together, and while I might normally prefer more in the way of character development, or perhaps some concession to more florid language, the book is certainly gripping, and held my attention right from the start. I doubt if I will be hastening to work my way through the whole Grisham canon, but I certainly have no regrets about having read this book. ( )

Legal and Ilegal

The story goes from law school to law practice. The book gains friction about halfway and never stops. The main characters are interesting and the story develops in different ways. At the end one marvels if it’s possible to discern between legal and ilegal stuff. John Grisham made a touchdown. ( )

Good. Reading 20+ years it is a bit dated, but that is good too. ( )