The Partner
ISBN: 9780099410317
Description
They found him in a small town in Brazil, near the border with Paraguay. He had a new name and his appearance had been changed by plastic surgery. The search had taken four years. It had cost their clients three and a half million dollars. But so far none of them had complained. Before, he had another life, a life which ended in a car crash in February 1992. His gravestone lay in a cemetery. He had been a partner at an up and coming law firm. Six weeks after his death, $90 million had disappeared from the law firm. It was then that his partners knew he was still alive, and the long pursuit had begun.
Reviewed on 8th August 2010
This is the most disappointingly irritating John Grisham novel I have read so far. The writing is Grisham's usual - no complaints over style - but the plot is awful.
Patrick is a criminal who faked his own death and stole $90 million from his employer, yet he is the star of the show and we are meant to sympathise, despite learning relatively little about how or why he did it until fairly late on. He's now been caught, and the book tells the story of his attempts to get away with it.
Forget what I said earlier. The style is awful. Almost the entire plot is played out as dialogue. Between Patrick and his lawyer, Patrick and his judge, the FBI and the victims etc. As such there is no action at all beyond the first chapter. Everything is people talking about events in the past.
And finally, the end, while set up to be the traditional Grisham conclusion, suddenly departs from that track at the last second leaving the reader feeling unfulfilled. There's no hint whatsoever that this is what's coming.
So overall this gets three stars from me. It's entertaining from the point of view that you keep reading because you want to know all the details, but infuriating because of the points above.
