[Review] The Firm - John Grisham

Title of Book:  The Firm
Author:  John Grisham
Publisher:  Random House Publishing Group

Mitchell McDeere, raised in the coal-mining region of rural Kentucky, has worked hard to get where he is: third in his class at Harvard Law. He's young. He's bright. He's ambitious. Mitch could have the pick of the big firms in New York and Chicago, but he's chosen the Memphis tax firm of Bendini, Lambert & Locke. They're selective. They pay outrageous salaries. They have a turnover rate of zero. And Mitch is about to find out why.Several events fuel Mitch's growing suspicions: two of the partners die in a suspicious diving accident off Grand Cayman; the senior partners seem unduly proud of the fact that no one has ever resigned; and security measures at the office are, even for a company with billionaire clients, more than a little extreme. Then Mitch makes an explosive discovery: The firm is owned and operated by the most powerful organized crime family in Chicago. Even as Mitch discovers the truth, he finds himself caught between the FBI, who wants an informant inside the firm, and the firm itself, which will make him a very rich man—or a very dead one.

Another John Grisham’s works, the firm is one of Grisham’s early works. The Firm is about a young man named Mitch McDeere who had it all except money. He graduated from Harvard Law School and got job offers from many firms. He finally decided to take an offer from a tax firm in Memphis called Bendini, Lambert & Locke. Simply because this firm leased him a BMW, gave him a lot of money for his first year working, and had a turnover rate of zero. Everything started to change in Mitch’s life after a strange accident occurred in Grand Cayman. Two of the firm’s partners died mysteriously while they were on their holiday. Mitch began to suspect that there was a lot more in the firm than just a money producing factory. His suspicions became real when he discovered that the firm’s security measures were a little extreme and FBI agents tried to approach him. Mitch had to make decisions whether to continue his luxurious life with his beautiful wife, Abby, and pretend to know nothing or to help the FBI dismantled the ins and the outs of the firm and prepared to be the next lawyer who probably got a strange accident in Grand Cayman.
The main character in this book sounds real to me. He had an unfortunate childhood so he worked hard. He is young, smart, and ambitious. He is madly in love with his wife. All of those descriptions make him perfect, but Grisham made him more human when Mitch cheated on his business trip in Grand Cayman. Mitch is a man after all. I personally love Mitch J
We are going to feel the suspense in the half of the last part of the book. In the first half, we will find out about Mitch’s life. We will see how Mitch’s ambition turned him into a workaholic who worked more than 15 hours a day. In the last half, we will see how Mitch’s life became disaster. He had to choose between the FBI or the firm. Meanwhile the firm only gives him two choices, to keep planting money or to dig his own grave.
This book has been adapted into movie directed by Sydney Pollack, starring Tom Cruise as Mitch and Jeanne Tripplehorn as Abby . This movie was released on June 1993. I haven’t watched the movie yet, but I do have an intention to watch it later.


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