I picked up the latest Grisham novel at the used book sale just before Christmas. It’s not his best, but it’s fun. Grisham writes well, but he’s run out of plot twists and characters. His protagonists are all starting to seem like the same guy endlessly reincarnated and making the same mistakes with the same results. The Broker is more about espionage ansd spies than lawyers, but they’re all the same according to Grisham. Lawyers and Washington power brokers and spies–they all neglect their families, sell their souls for a mess of pottage, and live with regrets. In The Broker the regrets are accompanied by dangerous repercussions of decisions made in the heat of greed and lust for power.

Joel Bachman, a former Washington power broker, has spent the last six years in federal prison. As the President of the United States is leaving office, having been defeated in the most recent presidential election, he grants Bachman a pardon. For Bachman it’s more like a death sentence since the bad guys, who couldn’t get to him in prison, are now are out to get him–with a vengeance. The rest of the book is about figuring out who the bad guys are, what secrets Bachman knows, and how Bachman will escape the evil clutches of the Israelis, the Saudis, the Russians, the Chinese, the CIA and heaven-knows-who-else. Joel Bachman is just not as sympathetic a character as some of Grisham’s other seedy heroes, and I never could decide if I wanted him to get away or not.

If you’ve read any of Grisham’s other books, you know how it ends. The suspense is just in finding out how. Adequate entertainment, but not as good as The Firm nor The Street Lawyer nor The Pelican Brief.