The Associate - John Grisham

I am always eager to read John Grisham's latest releases - this one focuses on Kyle - about to graduate from Yale law school and spend a couple years helping immigrants with their legal issues. But, people have other plans for Kyle. Blackmailing him with a shady incident from his college past, Kyle is forced to begin work as an associate in one of New York's biggest corporate law firms. The goal is for Kyle to become part of the team defending a huge piece of litigation - and steal documents for his blackmailers. As Kyle tries some espionage of his own, attempting to figure out the true identity of his blackmailers, he finds his life, and the lives of those around him, in serious danger. For the most part, Grisham manages to maintain the suspense in this novel. But, his portrayal of life as a first-year associate was a bit fanciful. Grisham has Kyle coming in regularly for 7:00 am meetings. In the time I worked for NY partners in my West Coast office, I never once had a meeting scheduled before 11:00 am EST. Kyle also has a series of unrealistically frank conversations with his mentor partner, and in one scene meant to emphasize the callous mistreatment of young associates, he is forced to drive a senior associate's Jaguar around Manhattan while the senior associate and the partner attend a court hearing. Perhaps this could happen in real life, but I don't know a single NY attorney who wouldn't take a cab or a town car in the middle of the day. The little details irritated me, yet I was able to suspend my disbelief at the overall story of a first-year attorney blackmailed into downloading super confidential files from a high security office space that is strangely closed from 10 pm until 6:00 am every day. As with all Grisham, you can't expect realism, but you can expect high-paced entertainment - and on that front Grisham continues to deliver.