![[Sneak Peeks]](../../banners/sneaks.gif)
RECENT REVIEWS:
3/6/97:
3/5/97:
3/4/97:
3/3/97:
2/28/97:
SEARCH BOOK ARCHIVES BY: |
By JOHN GRISHAM Doubleday, 366 pages, Fiction
First, you fake your death in a fiery car crash, like his protagonist, Patrick Lanigan. Next, impersonate one of your law partners and abscond with $90 million owed to a client. Finally, fly down to Rio, change your name to Danilo and lose yourself in the midst of a bazillion Brazilians. Pick up a paperback at the airport on your way in. But not so fast. Patrick's done all this four years ago, and none of it keeps him from getting caught by ruthless bounty hunters in the first chapter (available on AOL, if AOL's available). At this point, Patrick's girlfriend springs one of only two surprises in the whole novel, but for a legal thriller, it's a lulu: She rescues him by telling the truth. She calls the FBI, whom Patrick's been fleeing since the day he disappeared, and the G-men frighten off the goons and extradite Patrick back to Mississippi, a place Patrick despises (and Grisham loves). Ahhh, you can almost hear Grisham sigh, home-court advantage. Goodbye nasty old Rio, hello 40 chapters of interminable legal maneuverings, as Patrick plays his victims off against the Feds to regain his freedom. Reading the middle chunk of "The Partner" is like being sued by a really good lawyer. Between the boilerplate descriptive paragraphs and the depositions masquerading as dialogue and the interchangeable characters -- Who's this again? Better flip back -- Grisham papers you to death. The plot doesn't have any real holes to speak of, but it doesn't have any special wrinkles, either. (At least not until the end, which actually isn't bad.) Patrick's meant to be an enigma -- so we can wonder if he's capable of having killed the corpse that passed for him in the car wreck -- but he comes off as more of a cipher instead. Grisham's use of language isn't embarrassing, except perhaps cumulatively, when you get near the end and realize he hasn't turned a single memorable phrase. This reviewer's quotational tweezers hovered over every page, but Grisham's patented non-stick prose resists plucking.
"The Partner" could have been an interesting book. It's always chancy to label themes as peculiarly American -- as if one country could corner the market on individualism, say, or self-reliance -- but the idea of thwarted escape does seem to tempt us endlessly, from "Huck Finn" clear up through "Rabbit, Run." Grisham senses this, and flirts with it a couple of times, but he's too busy filing countermotions to make much hay out of it. By the end of "The Partner," we find out pretty much the same thing Patrick did during his Brazilian getaway: Escapism's no fun if you have to keep looking behind you, whether for shady characters or, in the reader's case, half-forgotten ones.
-- David Kipen
David Kipen is an editor at Variety and Daily Variety. He lives in Malibu. |
john Grisham's new novel, "The Partner," is an escapist novel about escape. It's apparently not enough that Grisham has become as prolific a purveyor of beach reading as America's got at the moment. Now he's instructed his readers on how to add an extra 50 weeks a year to their towel time.
