2023-08-12The Firm (1991), star attorney Mitch McDeere tries to rustle up ransom for a kidnapped colleague in Libya.
In The Firm , he barely escaped the clutches of the corrupt law firm Bendini, Lambert & Locke. Now it’s 15 years later and Mitch is living in New York and is a partner at Scully & Pershing, the world’s largest law firm. He’s frustrated that his Alabama and Tennessee death row clients keep getting the needle, except for the latest one who supposedly hanged himself in his cell. He doesn’t want to take any more of these cases, so he agrees to help out on a lawsuit for Luca Sandroni, a Scully partner in Rome who’s dying of pancreatic cancer. The client is Lannak, a major Turkish construction company that's suing the government of Libya for an unpaid debt of $400 million. Please let my daughter, Giovanna, come and help you, Luca asks Mitch. She’s an associate in the firm's London branch. It’s 2005, the time of Muammar Gaddafi, who came up with the harebrained idea of building the “Great Gaddafi Bridge in central Libya, over an unnamed river yet to be found,” Luca says. (It’s true!) Mitch plans to see the bridge, but he comes down with a wicked case of food poisoning, so Giovanna volunteers to go instead. Soon she’s been kidnapped, and her guards and driver are murdered. In Manhattan, a mysterious woman tells Mitch’s wife, Abby, that the price of Giovanna’s return is $100 million, and she will die if anyone involves the government or police. Can Scully & Pershing put their hands on that much dough? And who are they dealing with? Mitch isn’t even certain whether Gaddafi is behind the crime or whether it's some unknown gang. Mitch and Abby come across as sympathetic and credible, while other characters are no deeper than they need to be. The story moves at a fast pace, leaving a trail of bodies in its wake.
A tense legal thriller with nary a courtroom scene.
08/21/2023
Grisham’s disappointing sequel to The Firm , set 15 years after the events of that 1991 blockbuster, isn’t worth the three-decade wait. After extricating himself from a Tennessee law firm run by the mob, Mitch McDeere has begun a new life in New York City with his wife, Abby. Mitch has become a partner at Scully & Pershing, “the premier international firm on the planet,” allowing him and Abby to enjoy a comfortable existence on the Upper West Side with their eight-year-old twin boys. That stability gets shaken when Mitch is sent to Libya to represent Lannak, a Turkish construction company that’s been stiffed hundreds of millions of dollars by Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi. Despite extensive security precautions, Mitch’s team comes under attack by Libyan forces; the fallout claims multiple lives, puts the McDeeres’ twins in peril, and nudges Abby to abandon her post as a cookbook editor to try and save her husband. Grisham conjures some suspense, but nothing here deepens or complicates his original characterizations—it often feels like a somewhat loopy standard-issue legal thriller has been papered over with characters from The Firm . It’s a letdown. Agent: David Gernert, Gernert Company. (Oct.)
Narrator Edoardo Ballerini masterfully narrates this sequel, reacquainting listeners with Mitch and Abby McDeere 15 years after their harrowing misadventures in THE FIRM. Mitch, now a successful partner in the largest law firm in the world, faces an intense kidnapping crisis in Libya involving a Turkish client and an associate of Mitch's. Ballerini leverages his talent with accents as the action moves back and forth from New York to Rome, Libya, Morocco, and Maine. Impressively, Ballerini also finds credible voices for Abby, who plays a big role, and for the McDeeres' twin 8-year-old sons. The more mature Mitch seems to have lost his ingenuity, legal sharpness, and fearlessness while maintaining his persistence and sense of justice. The result is a well-narrated audiobook of a somewhat disappointing story. E.Q. © AudioFile 2023, Portland, Maine
NOVEMBER 2023 - AudioFile
