I read ’The Broker’ because I liked some of his earlier books: The Brief, The Firm, The Brethren, The Chamber, etc. But I am disappointed by ’The Broker’ because none of the wonderful lawyer stuff is on display.
’’The Broker’’ is just another spy thriller; change a few names and places, and you can’t differentiate this book from the kind of story that Robert Ludlum, Frederick Forsythe, Tom Clancy and a dozen others have been dishing out.
In the best of Grisham, we could expand our knowledge of the US legal scenario to a large extent. In that respect, ’’The Broker’’ is quite inadequate. The story line is too simple and the climax is tame. Besides, the ’leap of faith’ that finally brings the story to a close is mentioned almost in passing. It is not emphasised enough. It takes place in a war memorial in Bologna and only at the end of the story does one realise that the single paragraph was the turning point of the entire story!
But I must say, the slippage had begun earlier. ’’The Testament’’ reads more like a travelogue than a legal thriller, and ’’The Summons’’ also has a most unsatisfactory ending.