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This is the story of Mitch McDeer the oh so brilliant Harvard Law School graduate who’s like THE BEST at everything. He could have a job at any of the big town firms but chooses a small firm at Memphis called Bendini, Lambert & Locke because of the money, and the house, and the car that they just throw at him. And then surprise, surprise it turns out that if it sounds too good to be true... Mitch finds out that the firm is owned by the mafia and is engaged in a ton of illegal activities.
The short review would be: boring and stupid. It took me ten days to finish not because of the length but because it was so bad I didn’t want to read more than four chapters every day. It was that dreadful. This is only the eight book that (at least so far) I’ve given only 1 star, the lowest possible rating. I don’t throw it around at just any other book so trust me when I say – it’s bad. Maybe after reading The Pelican Brief first I should have realized that Grisham can’t write but The Firm was kind of famous so I wanted to see what all the fuss was about.
The first part goes into the boring category, mostly. You have Mitch and his lovely wife Abby who have all the depth of weekend morning cartoon characters. You have tedious scenes of a lawyer’s life which drag on forever and make you wonder when the interesting things will begin. You also scenes of what the bad guys are doing which means there is no suspense. The bad guys say: “we’ll do X” and then surprise, surprise X happens. Not very exciting reading
After the great revelation, that the firm is shady and Mitch will have to work with the FBI, come the stupid parts. Because Mitch, who just recently graduated from the law school and has worked at the firm for a wooping one year, is apparently smarter than the firm, the mafia, the FBI and police put together. Forgive me if my disbelief is not suspended.
Added to all that is the fact that Mitch is not a likeable character. Part of that is the bad writing, another part is that what characterization there is just makes him look like an asshole. The first moment when I seriously didn’t like Mitch was when he demanded money from the FBI for handing over the documents. I was at first willing to forgive that because he would have to abandon his old life and he had a wife to support. Okay, and then he demands that his brother be released from the prison. He was not wrongfully convicted and you don’t feel from the book that they were ever that close (the book just tells us that). So why? Good guys aren’t supposed to act like this. Possibly, in the hands of a better author, the story of the corruption of Mitch McDeer could have worked but this is not it.
And after all that time spent the book just ends sort of abruptly. Our hero is barely present during the final parts of the story (that focus on the FBI and the bad guys just to show how brilliant Mitch) is and at the end we’re only briefly informed that the bad guys were caught but never actually see the aftermath. Then the heroes go on to spend their days living on beaches and with enough money to never work a job again. Because that’s all these people care about apparently.
The short review would be: boring and stupid. It took me ten days to finish not because of the length but because it was so bad I didn’t want to read more than four chapters every day. It was that dreadful. This is only the eight book that (at least so far) I’ve given only 1 star, the lowest possible rating. I don’t throw it around at just any other book so trust me when I say – it’s bad. Maybe after reading The Pelican Brief first I should have realized that Grisham can’t write but The Firm was kind of famous so I wanted to see what all the fuss was about.
The first part goes into the boring category, mostly. You have Mitch and his lovely wife Abby who have all the depth of weekend morning cartoon characters. You have tedious scenes of a lawyer’s life which drag on forever and make you wonder when the interesting things will begin. You also scenes of what the bad guys are doing which means there is no suspense. The bad guys say: “we’ll do X” and then surprise, surprise X happens. Not very exciting reading
After the great revelation, that the firm is shady and Mitch will have to work with the FBI, come the stupid parts. Because Mitch, who just recently graduated from the law school and has worked at the firm for a wooping one year, is apparently smarter than the firm, the mafia, the FBI and police put together. Forgive me if my disbelief is not suspended.
Added to all that is the fact that Mitch is not a likeable character. Part of that is the bad writing, another part is that what characterization there is just makes him look like an asshole. The first moment when I seriously didn’t like Mitch was when he demanded money from the FBI for handing over the documents. I was at first willing to forgive that because he would have to abandon his old life and he had a wife to support. Okay, and then he demands that his brother be released from the prison. He was not wrongfully convicted and you don’t feel from the book that they were ever that close (the book just tells us that). So why? Good guys aren’t supposed to act like this. Possibly, in the hands of a better author, the story of the corruption of Mitch McDeer could have worked but this is not it.
And after all that time spent the book just ends sort of abruptly. Our hero is barely present during the final parts of the story (that focus on the FBI and the bad guys just to show how brilliant Mitch) is and at the end we’re only briefly informed that the bad guys were caught but never actually see the aftermath. Then the heroes go on to spend their days living on beaches and with enough money to never work a job again. Because that’s all these people care about apparently.