Muhammad Thaqqif novel #1
Monday, 29 December 2014 | 17:59 | 0 comments
Novel #1
Name: Muhammad Thaqqif bin Zulkhibri
Class: 2 Al-Biruni
College
number: 13137
THE ASSOCIATE
By John Grisham
The Associate is a novel about a brilliant young American law student with
a Scottish surname and a butch forename who surprises everyone with his choice
of the law firm where he is to train. What we know, though his friends don't,
is that he has been lured there by dark forces. While at college, our hero was
a senior editor at the Yale Law Journal. Kyle McAvoy would also have been a
college basketball star if he had not injured his knee. The firm he joins is
obsessed with maximising the number of billable hours charged by each trainee.
After joining, he is asked to steal information from clients' files. This is
difficult because of high levels of security. And it's dangerous because he
could lose his job - or worse. His room is bugged and his movements monitored.
But the bad guys are never quite sure how much he knows about this. Eventually,
the FBI becomes involved. But our hero has an ambiguous relationship with the
bureau, preferring to run things his own way.
The Associate portrays leaving aside the moralising, though, is it a
plausible thriller? We are required to believe that, as long ago as 2003, an ordinary
mobile phone would have been capable of recording five hours of high-quality,
voice-activated video and audio. A compromising recording taken by such a phone
mysteriously comes to light and is used for blackmail.
And perhaps because one of their clients happens to be an arms manufacturer
- "a rogue defence contractor with a rotten history of making cheap
products, screwing the government and the taxpayers, dumping dirty weapons
around the world, killing innocent people, promoting war and propping up nasty
little dictators, all in an effort to increase the bottom line and have
something to show the shareholders"
Though our hero believes himself to be in the clear, he goes along with the
blackmailers' demands. The reader screams at him to call their bluff, but that
would ruin the story. So we suspend our disbelief. Then, just as we have got
used to the idea, he changes his mind and sets about trapping the blackmailers
after all. And that's it. The ending is curiously flat. We are expected to
conclude that the real villains are Scully & Pershing. Not because they are
criminals, like the firm in The Firm, but simply because they are lawyers.
The master takes us inside and imagined New York law firm, Scully &
Pershing were huge salaries and bonuses are deemed just reward for round the
clock dedication to making big money. In this novel, Kyle McAvoy is about to find
himself trapped between a rock and a very hard place.
