I recall reading The Firm years ago (either before or shortly after the Tom Cruise film) and enjoying it as a clever and tense legal thriller – more about the lawyers than about any dramatic case, which was an interesting twist on the genre. I hadn’t thought about it much since then, although I have seen the film a few times and do enjoy it as a light filler kind of movie (one to watch when nothing else is on). When I saw that there was this sequel, I thought it would be a good filler book, something light in between more substantial reads – literary palate cleanser.
This was a total pulp fiction book, even its format (mass market paperback) suggesting it is the lightest-of-light literature. And it lives up (or down) to that expectation. Rather strangely, the story picks up 15 years after The Firm, in 2005 (so nearly 20 years ago). I imagine this was to keep the lead characters – Mitch and Abby – of an age that would still see them as attractive and agile (in their early 40s rather than mid-60s). Much of the story is unbelievable – how they managed to avoid “the mob” that would have been hunting them down after their betrayal of the firm and its clients; how Mitch manages to rejoin the legal profession (at all) and become a golden boy within a world-class firm; the manufactured crisis of hostage taking and corporate machinations; the Jason Bourne-like activities that resolve things to a happy ending for the Westerners. In addition to being predictable and anachronistic (the ubiquitous use of cell phones and video calling was not the reality of the 2005 that I remember), there is a shocking marginalization of the Libyan and Turkish characters, and caricaturization of any non-white participants. The quasi-cartoonish descriptions of the appearance, manner, and actions of the terrorists and their comrades was very off-putting. Similarly, the minimization of the trauma for the hostage was unbelievable: after being held in isolation and near sensory deprivation for nearly 6 weeks, she is drinking and partying within 48 hours of her return – that was not realistic nor sympathetic.
I finished this book because a) I wanted to see how things were eventually tied up (badly and quickly), and b) I wanted to get this off my plate and out the door.
Suffice to say, this was a disappointment, and reminder to stick with quality over pulp any day.
Fate: little book library TODAY.
1 – a murder
36 – part of a series
38 – drivel
rclr 
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