The Broker

Title: The Broker
Author: John Grishman
422 pages/ 18 Chapters
Date published September 2006

So another John Grishman book,this is his typical work a Thriller revolving around law and layers. 

So the story goes like this:

The US president tried running for reelection. Mr Morgan and Mrs Morgan toured the country looking for support. But in many of the places they visited the family made several mistakes that went from insulting the local sports team to bad mouthing the typical food from said places. Bad badbad for politics really. In other words, his family made it impossible for him to be reelected. In the last few minutes of his presidential mandate he gets a visit from the director of the CIA, Teddy Mynard, with a single request:
To request the FULL PARDON of one Joel Backman.

Funny fact:

Preseident Morgan just lost the reelections.
Morgan and Maynard hate each other's guts with a passion.

CIA arguments that Backman went to jail without talking. He possess secrets that could compromise national security. 
Mr Preseident has issues with the CIA's plan.

Plan:
1. Grant the pardon to Backman
2. Tell the newly released man to flee the county, adapt a new identity and never return to USA. 
3. Watch him
4. Leak his whereabouts to the right people and find out who kills him. Once he is urdered the US government will have its answers.

WHAT? HOW? WHO? WHY?

It all started with a satelite program and three very lucky  programers that discovered that it had capacities well beyond the most sophisticated operated by any country. These three individuals got greedy and Backman was even more so.

Too much $$$$ always leads to trouble. At the beginning the 3 ndividuals wanted to sell it to the US government 

JAM was kept a secret... or at least they tried. Mistake #1.
They divulged what the program could do in order to try to sell it. Mistake #2.

What did it do?
Everything imaginable see, hear, jam programs, stop communication.... It was everything... It was a gold mine.

It was their downfall.

They got caught. Some were killed others, only one actually, went to prison.

So back, now Backman gets hauled from prison and sent to Italy. He did not talk or confess to anthing much to the CIA's displeasure. He had nothing really so he agreed to leave the country and didn't even try to contact his "family". 

His new name is Marco and he is a Canadian vacationing through Italy.

A lot of the middle part is about his "advetures" in that country adapting and it realy feels like nothing happens. I want to finish the book but I wasn't as thrilled by it like I imagined. It is good but it lacks exitement and the fear of being chased and caught and it really feels like it's moving too slow. It could have been made a much shorter book or maybe there are things that it lacking... I don't feel the angst as I read. I am not nervous of the main character being outsmarted or anything like other of his books. 

I was a bit dissapointed by the book as a whole, I still like the theme and I guess towards the end it will be better but as of now, I am 70% through and I am still waiting to get to the good exiting part of the story. I suspect it does not have one. 

Ok the end wasn't as I had predicted but it rang true to Grishman's style. I like it ok but it was a bit of a let down due to the high expectations I had of it. I did not get the high of the climax in this book as I have with previous of his books. 
So I gave it a 3 out of 5 stars. 

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Bird Box

Mid Month Wrap up (Hous Pocus + #AYearAThon)

The Diabolic

Frankisstein: A love story