Skip “The Exchange,” our columnist advises, and pick up “The Plinko Bounce” or “The Last One” instead.
Whatever happened to Mitch McDeere, the brash young associate who brought down the corrupt law firm of Bendini, Lambert & Locke in John Grisham’s game-changing 1991 legal thriller, “The Firm”? Three decades later, Grisham has resurrected Mitch — or Tom, as I like to think of him, because Tom Cruise played him with such seductive charm in the movie — for another outing.
The new book, THE EXCHANGE (Doubleday, 338 pp., $29.95), should be a delicious gift to Grisham fans. But once you’ve read it, you might find yourself wishing that Mitch, last seen slipping out of sight while Bendini, Lambert & Locke imploded, had simply decided to while away his days in moneyed obscurity.
Unfortunately, that is not the case. It is 2005, and despite his earlier experience in corporate law, Mitch — still married to Abby, and now the father of twin boys — has joined the gargantuan international law firm of Scully & Pershing. When one of its associates, Giovanna, a young woman whose physical allure Grisham mentions early and often, is kidnapped by Libyan terrorists, it somehow falls to Mitch to raise the $100 million ransom.
As he travels to various European capitals trying to wrest money from low-level government officials, the reader is subjected to sloppily written and excruciatingly dull details about plane tickets, car rides, architecture, how long it takes to get from one place to another and virtually every meal the characters eat, all of it weighed down by leaden dialogue. When it becomes clear that the kidnappers are surveilling Mitch and his family’s every move, it’s described this way: “The shock had not begun to wear off; indeed, they were still in the middle of the shock.”
Since his 1989 debut, “A Time to Kill,” Grisham has been remarkably prolific and often wonderful. I love his books, but I wish he hadn’t written this one.
After toiling for years for little glory and even less pay as a public defender in rural Virginia, Andy Hughes, a by-the-book lawyer and generally good guy, agrees to represent one last defendant before taking a fancy job at a big law firm. It’s not a great case. His client, a violent ex-con named Damian Bullins who is accused of murdering a woman in a drug-fueled frenzy, is obviously guilty.
But even a lowlife like Bullins deserves the best possible defense, as Martin Clark explains in his terrific new legal thriller, THE PLINKO BOUNCE (Rare Bird Books, 270 pp., $28). First Andy finds a procedural error, and then some big holes in the prosecution’s case. How can he square his notion of justice with his professional responsibility?
Clark, a retired Virginia circuit court judge and the author of several previous novels, brings an insider’s knowledge of the intricacies of the courtroom and an evenhanded, unflashy authority to his writing. His characters seem airlifted from another era, when lawyers were honest and courteous and believed in one another’s good intentions.
But there’s more going on than you might suppose. “Plinko” refers to a game on “The Price Is Right” in which contestants drop plastic disks into a giant vertical peg board, winning money depending on where they land. It’s impossible to game it out; the pegs make the disks behave in random, unstable ways.
That seems to be the situation here. “On rare occasions, in our cut-and-dried, predictable, turn-the-crank justice system, we catch a Plinko case,” Andy observes. Tuck that notion away as you read on. Wait for the bounce.
Waking up on her first morning aboard the Atlantica, a luxury ocean liner traveling from England to America, Caz Ripley is startled to find herself alone. Her boyfriend, Pete, is gone. Her fellow passengers — gone. The crew, the captain, the obsequious waiter in the Platinum Grill on Deck 10 — they’re gone, too.
If this were a 1960s TV show, Rod Serling would appear to provide unnerving commentary, but alas, he is not a character in Will Dean’s increasingly wacky but strangely entertaining THE LAST ONE (Emily Bestler Books, 436 pp., paperback, $18.99). “It must be some kind of malfunction,” thinks Caz. “A gas leak or a hull breach below the waterline. They took everyone off the ship as a safety precaution.”
It’s not giving too much away to reveal that Caz soon meets up with a handful of other passengers who are just as baffled as she is. The Atlantica is still traveling at a brisk 29 knots, and the passengers can’t override the autopilot controls. Also, it seems to be going the wrong way.
“Look at the sun,” one says. “Right now this ship’s headed due south. If we stay on this course, the first landmass we’ll hit will be the Antarctic ice shelf.”
The narration is breathless and brisk, with a tiny suspenseful hook to keep you guessing, and reading on, at the end of each chapter. A number of strange and troubling things will go wrong for these unfortunate people before they’re hit by a giant plot twist.
Get your bowl of popcorn.
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New Thrillers, Including 'The Exchange,' John Grisham's Sequel to 'The Firm' - The New York Times
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