The Exchange: After The Firm

by John Grisham

Overview

Notes From Your Bookseller

The Firm launched the rapid rise of John Grisham, master of the legal thriller. Now we follow up with the McDeeres — and the corporate intrigue and deadly secrets they can’t escape. If you’re looking for a great new read after binge-watching Suits, start here.

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • John Grisham delivers high-flying international suspense in a stunning new legal thriller that marks the return of Mitch McDeere, the brilliant hero of The Firm.

What became of Mitch and Abby McDeere after they exposed the crimes of Memphis law firm Bendini, Lambert & Locke and fled the country? The answer is in The Exchange, the riveting sequel to The Firm, the blockbuster thriller that launched the career of America’s favorite storyteller. It is now fifteen years later, and Mitch and Abby are living in Manhattan, where Mitch is a partner at the largest law firm in the world. When a mentor in Rome asks him for a favor that will take him far from home, Mitch finds himself at the center of a sinister plot that has worldwide implications—and once again endangers his colleagues, friends, and family. Mitch has become a master at staying one step ahead of his adversaries, but this time there’s nowhere to hide.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780385548953
Publisher:	Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Publication date:	10/17/2023
Series:	The Firm Series , #2
Pages:	352
Sales rank:	17
Product dimensions:	5.90(w) x 9.30(h) x 1.40(d)

About the Author

John Grisham is the author of numerous #1 bestsellers, which have been translated into nearly fifty languages. His recent books include The Boys from Biloxi, The Judge’s List, Sooley, and his third Jake Brigance novel, A Time for Mercy, which is being developed by HBO as a limited series.

Grisham is a two-time winner of the Harper Lee Prize for Legal Fiction and was honored with the Library of Congress Creative Achievement Award for Fiction.

When he’s not writing, Grisham serves on the board of directors of the Innocence Project and of Centurion Ministries, two national organizations dedicated to exonerating those who have been wrongfully convicted. Much of his fiction explores deep-seated problems in our criminal justice system.

Grisham lives on a farm in central Virginia.

Hometown:

Oxford, Mississippi, and Albemarle County, Virginia

Date of Birth:

February 8, 1955

Place of Birth:

Jonesboro, Arkansas

Education:

B.S., Mississippi State, 1977; J.D., University of Mississippi, 1981

Website:

http://www.jgrisham.com

Editorial Reviews

2023-08-12
In this sequel to The Firm (1991), star attorney Mitch McDeere tries to rustle up ransom for a kidnapped colleague in Libya.

In The Firm, he barely escaped the clutches of the corrupt law firm Bendini, Lambert & Locke. Now it’s 15 years later and Mitch is living in New York and is a partner at Scully & Pershing, the world’s largest law firm. He’s frustrated that his Alabama and Tennessee death row clients keep getting the needle, except for the latest one who supposedly hanged himself in his cell. He doesn’t want to take any more of these cases, so he agrees to help out on a lawsuit for Luca Sandroni, a Scully partner in Rome who’s dying of pancreatic cancer. The client is Lannak, a major Turkish construction company that's suing the government of Libya for an unpaid debt of $400 million. Please let my daughter, Giovanna, come and help you, Luca asks Mitch. She’s an associate in the firm's London branch. It’s 2005, the time of Muammar Gaddafi, who came up with the harebrained idea of building the “Great Gaddafi Bridge in central Libya, over an unnamed river yet to be found,” Luca says. (It’s true!) Mitch plans to see the bridge, but he comes down with a wicked case of food poisoning, so Giovanna volunteers to go instead. Soon she’s been kidnapped, and her guards and driver are murdered. In Manhattan, a mysterious woman tells Mitch’s wife, Abby, that the price of Giovanna’s return is $100 million, and she will die if anyone involves the government or police. Can Scully & Pershing put their hands on that much dough? And who are they dealing with? Mitch isn’t even certain whether Gaddafi is behind the crime or whether it's some unknown gang. Mitch and Abby come across as sympathetic and credible, while other characters are no deeper than they need to be. The story moves at a fast pace, leaving a trail of bodies in its wake.

A tense legal thriller with nary a courtroom scene.

Kirkus Reviews

08/21/2023

Grisham’s disappointing sequel to The Firm, set 15 years after the events of that 1991 blockbuster, isn’t worth the three-decade wait. After extricating himself from a Tennessee law firm run by the mob, Mitch McDeere has begun a new life in New York City with his wife, Abby. Mitch has become a partner at Scully & Pershing, “the premier international firm on the planet,” allowing him and Abby to enjoy a comfortable existence on the Upper West Side with their eight-year-old twin boys. That stability gets shaken when Mitch is sent to Libya to represent Lannak, a Turkish construction company that’s been stiffed hundreds of millions of dollars by Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi. Despite extensive security precautions, Mitch’s team comes under attack by Libyan forces; the fallout claims multiple lives, puts the McDeeres’ twins in peril, and nudges Abby to abandon her post as a cookbook editor to try and save her husband. Grisham conjures some suspense, but nothing here deepens or complicates his original characterizations—it often feels like a somewhat loopy standard-issue legal thriller has been papered over with characters from The Firm. It’s a letdown. Agent: David Gernert, Gernert Company. (Oct.)

Publishers Weekly

Narrator Edoardo Ballerini masterfully narrates this sequel, reacquainting listeners with Mitch and Abby McDeere 15 years after their harrowing misadventures in THE FIRM. Mitch, now a successful partner in the largest law firm in the world, faces an intense kidnapping crisis in Libya involving a Turkish client and an associate of Mitch's. Ballerini leverages his talent with accents as the action moves back and forth from New York to Rome, Libya, Morocco, and Maine. Impressively, Ballerini also finds credible voices for Abby, who plays a big role, and for the McDeeres' twin 8-year-old sons. The more mature Mitch seems to have lost his ingenuity, legal sharpness, and fearlessness while maintaining his persistence and sense of justice. The result is a well-narrated audiobook of a somewhat disappointing story. E.Q. © AudioFile 2023, Portland, Maine

NOVEMBER 2023 - AudioFile