Five years later, when Kyle is a senior at Yale Law School and editor of the Law Journal, a videotape of the incident is brought to his attention by parties unknown. Kyle is forced to abandon his job in public interest law helping migrant workers in Virginia (much to the chagrin of his father who is also a lawyer) and take a job with the "largest law firm in the world" so that he can provide insider information about a case regarding who had the rights to the design of a hypersonic airplane which the government has awarded a contract for $800 Billion.  

Kyle enlists Joey Bernardo, one of his Duquesne roommates, to help him. When Baxter Tate, privileged alcoholic and drug addict and the key offender in the incident, is mysteriously murdered after finding religion during his second stint in rehab and returns to Pittsburgh to set things straight with the victim, Joey wants nothing further to do with Kyle and his unknown associates.

 The Associate is a lackluster story by renowned author John Grisham filled with legal clichés about the difficulty of passing the bar exam, the obsession with billable hours, very long work weeks for young associates who require sleeping bags at their desks, partners who bill expensive lunches to clients, and lawyers who are more interested in money than their clients.

The plot takes much too long to develop and the ending leaves readers with too many unanswered questions. Not at all what you would come to expect from John Grisham. If asked to summarize The Associate in two words, sadly, trite and boring are what immediately come to mind.

--Jerry Solot