The Associate

The Associate, John Grisham

Having been disappointed by the last couple of Grisham books, I found this one to be much more in the traditional Grisham style and reminiscent of The Firm.

Kyle McAvoy is a brilliant, newly qualified lawyer whose future is threatened by a dark secret from his past. He is blackmailed into taking a well paid job with a major New York law firm, from which he is supposed to steal secrets about a big, billion-dollar trial in exchange for the blackmailers’ silence. He therefore finds himself in a dilemma, caught between passing on secrets which could see him disbarred and his career destroyed, and keeping a lid on his past.

All the ingredients for a vintage Grisham novel are there, but the predicament is mundanely resolved. I felt the conclusion was a cop out and it ultimately left me dissatisfied. Despite the promising start and the gripping build-up, the ending turned out out to be something of an anti-climax.

James’ out-of-five star rating: **

Cell

Cell, Stephen King

An original and clever idea from a writer who I only recently “discovered”, I was hooked from the start. A signal, or virus, known as The Pulse is sent through mobile phones, infecting the majority of the population, scrambling their brains and sending civilization into chaos. Clayton Riddell has to find his son before he, too, becomes infected.

Clay hooks up with another guy and a young girl and together they start out on a journey to find Clay’s son before he is turned into a zombie. Though the story is a mixture of sci-fi and horror, King somehow manages to portray events realistically. The story moves along with a good, flowing pace.

However, as much as I enjoyed reading the book, I did feel cheated by the ending. I even found myself looking for a “missing” couple of pages. I guess you either like it or you don’t. If you are new to Stephen King, I would suggest perhaps starting with something else, like Different Seasons or Misery, which are, in my opinion, more tightly written and with much more satisfying conclusions.

James’ out-of-five star rating: ** (let down by the ending)