Book Review by Robert Wiersema The Exchange by John Grisham Well, this is a surprise. It’s hard to recall – especially after nearly 50 books and more than 300 million copies sold – but there was a time when John Grisham was about as far from a household name as you could get. Back in 1988, Grisham was a practising criminal lawyer and was serving in the Mississippi House of Representatives. In his spare time over the previous three years, he had written his first novel, A Time to Kill, which was rejected by 28 publishers before finding a home with tiny Wynwood Press. The book was published in June 1988, in a run of 5,000 copies. For a time, Grisham sold his own novel out of the trunk of his car. But he was also writing a new novel, which he had started the day after he finished A Time to Kill. That book – The Firm – not only changed Grisham’s life (it ended up on the New York Times bestseller list for 47 weeks, was the ninth top-selling book of 1991 and was adapted for film in 1993), it also changed fiction in the 1990s. Suddenly, legal thrillers were back, and among the hottest-selling genres. While Grisham has revisited a few of his characters (Jake Brigance from A Time to Kill, for example, has featured in three more novels), he has never gone back to noble-but-flawed lawyer Mitch McDeere and his wife Abby, despite leaving significant questions open at the end of The Firm. Until now. Those questions are answered early in The Exchange, which picks up Mitch and Abby’s story in 2005, 15 years after the events of The Firm. While keeping one eye out for mob pursuers, the couple lives in New York City with their two sons. Abby has become an editor at a cookbook publisher, while Mitch, despite the somewhat questionable shenanigans in The Firm, is a partner at the largest law firm in the world, where he has carved out a spot for himself as “a sort of legal SWAT team leader sent in…to rescue clients in distress. It was a role he relished and tried to expand while guarding it as his own.” When the daughter of one of Mitch’s mentors – who is also the firm’s partner in Italy – is taken hostage in Libya, it is up to Mitch to pursue solutions, to try to get her back safely. What follows is a globe-spanning thriller as Mitch chases down leads and attempts to put together a ransom, all the while trying to keep his family safe from the kidnappers who are watching them, too. Although it’s set in the world of the law, this is not so much a legal thriller as it is a straightforward, suspenseful thrill ride; there is very little in the way of courtroom drama and a lot of backroom negotiations, much like The Firm. In a way, it feels a bit like a novel from one of Grisham’s peers, Tom Clancy. Picture a Jack Ryan adventure without the tech-talk and the gunplay, and you’ll have a sense of The Exchange. It might not satisfy those looking for a courtroom drama (might I suggest Scott Turow’s Presumed Innocent, as a classic in that genre?), but it’s a go-forbroke read nonetheless, and one which you will have a hard time putting down (I certainly did). CSANews | WINTER 2023 | 39
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy MzMzNzMx