TITLE: The Partner
AUTHOR: John Grisham
GENRE: Legal Thriller
PUBLISHED: 1997
RATING: ★★★★★
PURCHASE LINKS: iBookStore, Amazon, Kobo
MOBILISM LINK: Mobilism( Book 8 )
Review:
DESCRIPTION: Patrick Lanigan is a partner in a prominent law firm based in Biloxi, Mississippi. He has a dream life, a beautiful wife, a daughter and a bright future. Seems great, doesn’t it? But then it changes. He learns that his partners are scheming to pocket $90 million, but not involving him in the plan. He steals the money, fakes his own death and flees to South America. But now, they have caught him again. He’s coming back to Mississippi for a trial like no other.
REVIEW:
“Life on the run was filled with dreams, some at night during sleep, real dreams, and some when the mind was awake but drifting. Most were terrifying, the nightmares of the shadows growing bolder and larger. Others were pleasant wishes of a rosy future, free of the past. These were rare, Patrick had learned. Life on the run was life in the past. There was no closure”
I must say I love the legal genre, and this is the best legal thriller I've read. John Grisham has a very enjoyable writing style because it engages you. This book was literally an un-put-downable page turner -- smart, fast, and almost criminally entertaining.
A group of bounty hunters arrives in a sleepy Brazilian town, not far from the Paraguayan border. Their quarry is Patrick Lanigan, an American lawyer who faked his own death in a fiery Bronco crash four years earlier, then absconded from Mississippi with $90 million. Even though he had changed his name, his appearance and even started speaking a new language, he was finally theirs to catch.
Lanigan is snatched and tortured but refuses to divulge where he's kept the stolen money. A man of ''meticulous planning,'' he's made prior arrangements to have the loot split up and wired around the world practically the moment he's captured. The locations of the new bank accounts are known only to Eva Miranda, Lanigan's Brazilian attorney and mistress, who disappears from her law office after alerting the FBI that Lanigan is in the custody of ruthless bounty hunters.
Eventually, Lanigan is returned to the United States, creating more legal work on the Gulf Coast ''than any single event in recent history.'' In less than 24 hours, he is sued for restitution as well as for divorce, and indicted for grand larceny and capital murder (of the burnt person who was believed to be Patrick).
Grisham's setup is immaculate; the way that he unravels the plot is masterful. He forces readers along a path right till the end before forcing them to make a U-turn and go the opposite way. Lanigan is brilliant, and he can make a good case, or at least a good excuse, for himself. He accepts abandoning his wife and child but he also proves that his wife is nothing but a spoilt, immoral party girl who was interested only in her boy-toy, who coincidentally was the child’s biological father. And yes, he swindled his legal partners and grabbed all those millions, but he proves (using the evidence he collected earlier) that his partners were rogues, and the money was dirty — won from the U.S. government in a bogus lawsuit.
Lanigan is conniving, calculating and clearly superior to his adversaries. He pulls off one stunning legal trick after another, outfoxing the feds and the local police at every turn, using blackmail and loopholes to slither out of the monumental jam that he's in. His ingenuity is enough to make you giddy. All the time, I was thinking to myself “Surely not now. He’ll be caught this time around.”, but no he’s just too good.
After finishing the novel, I wondered, “Is he really smart? Or is he just selfish? Making a mockery out of everything, the legal system, his relationships and everyone?” And then I realized. That’s the lesson Grisham wanted us to learn, you cannot live happily by messing everything up, fate is going to catch up.
**SPOILER** : Our hero, Patrick realizes this when his mistress Eva runs away forever with the money. He is left penniless and alone. He decides to look for her, even though he knows he would never be able to find her. **SPOILER** After all Patrick had taught her everything. Hats off to you, John Grisham.
When Patrick’s only friend Karl, a lawyer asks him if he could come along to look for Eva, Patrick asks him if he was ready to live a new life. Karl seems reluctant because he loved his wife and children. To this Patrick says,
“Everybody wants to run, Karl. At some point in life, everybody thinks about walking away. Life’s always better on the beach or in the mountains. Problems can be left behind. It’s inbred in us. We’re the products of immigrants who left miserable conditions and came here in search of a better life. And they kept moving west, packing up and leaving, always looking for the pot of gold. Now, there’s no place to go.”
Hard to argue against that huh? Surely one of the best lines in the book.
This book is a must read for all followers of this genre and also a good place to start for those looking to explore. Truly a masterpiece.
