Book Review: John Grisham's The Exchange is simply not a worthy sequel to The Firm

"When we meet Mitchell McDeere in The Exchange 15 years have passed and he has fought his way to the top of Scully and Pershing, the biggest law firm in the world."

Novelist John Grisham attends the Miami Book Fair 2018 for the discussion 'Three Masters of Their Form' at Miami Dade College on November 17, 2018 in Miami, Florida. (Photo by Desiree Navarro/Getty Images)

• The Exchange 
• John Grisham 
• Hodder & Stoughton,  €25

This is a follow-up to Grisham’s bestseller The Firm, published in 1991, and it also marks 30 years since the film adaptation which starred Tom Cruise.

The Firm was about Mitchell McDeere, known as Mitch, just out of Harvard Law, where he was number four in his class. 

He could have joined any law firm in the USA, but chose lowly Bendini, Lambert and Locke in Memphis, because he and wife Abby were attracted by all the benefits employment there offered. 

Gradually he discovers that the firm was set up by the Mafia to launder money and that a number of former employees have died mysteriously. 

When Mitch is approached by the FBI, he co-operates with them. As the novel ends, Abby, Mitch, and Ray, his brother who has helped them escape, are enjoying their newfound wealth in the Cayman Islands. It was a gripping read.

When we meet Mitch in The Exchange 15 years have passed and he has fought his way to the top of Scully and Pershing, the biggest law firm in the world. 

His enemies were either imprisoned and since release are living quiet lives or they are dead. Abby is senior editor with a publisher of cookery books, they live in New York and have twin sons aged eight.

Scully expects its partners to donate at least 10% of their time to various causes, among them helping prisoners on death row. 

At the beginning of the novel, Mitch is asked to help such a prisoner, but is reluctant, having had to watch an execution earlier that year, when his attempts failed, and not for the first time. 

Although the prisoner dies before he can visit him, he decides to travel to Memphis anyway, for the first time since he had to escape with Abby. While there he contacts a former colleague who had served time in prison.

The Exchange, by John Grisham

The novel is set in 2005 and there are references to the invasion of Iraq not going well. Colonel Gaddafi is still ruling Libya. 

His Great Man-made River Scheme, started in 1991, involved conveying high-quality water from groundwater in the southern basins to coastal regions where the country’s leading domestic, agricultural and industrial demands needed to be met. Though experts believed it would be impossible, the scheme succeeded. That is factual.

In the novel, after the success of the man-made river, Gaddafi had decided to link riverbeds known as wadis, creating a river. 

Part of the project involved building a bridge in the desert, and the contractor is a Turkish company called Lannak.

Mitch gets involved in the case taken against Gaddafi by Lannak looking for payment. When visiting Libya he takes along Giovanna, a young associate, the daughter of Luca, whose legal practice in Rome has merged with Scully. When she is kidnapped, Mitch gets involved in trying to raise the huge ransom being demanded, which even draws in his wife Abby in New York.

Most of the novel concerns attempts to free Giovanna and goes into far too much detail about negotiations about raising money. 

As the young woman has dual citizenship, British and Italian, those governments have to be consulted, so does Scullys’ management committee, and Lannak is drawn in.

This novel is disappointing. It lacks pace, and how the negotiations conclude is not convincing. 

While some of the earlier passages are interesting, including Mitch meeting with his former colleague, Grisham fails to integrate them successfully into the narrative.