Fast Pace Speeds Over Plot Potholes In Grisham’s Newest
“The Partner” By John Grisham (Doubleday, 367pp. $26.95)
Everyone is interested in Patrick Lanigan. The public is interested in him because he’s the hero of John Grisham’s annual best-selling novel, his eighth, “The Partner.”
A lot of other people are interested in Patrick because he has walked away with $90 million that doesn’t belong to him; not only has he walked away, he’s disappeared. For a few days people even thought he was dead - after all, his smashed car was found after an accident, the body inside charred beyond recognition. Patrick didn’t attend his own funeral, but he did observe his own interment, watching his not-so-desolate widow from the vantage point of a nearby tree.
There’s some question about just who the rightful owner of the money is - a number of parties strongly believe they are entitled to it, if they can only find it. The crooked partners in the law firm where Patrick used to work are of the opinion that part of the money belongs to them. A crooked whistleblower named Benny Aricia knows the money belongs to him. A couple of crooked insurance companies are involved, along with a crafty thug named Jack Stephano, whose job is to find Patrick and the money. The federal government has also taken an interest in the matter.
Patrick is a smart guy who knows how to look out for himself. Better than that, he knows he doesn’t have to look out for himself. He’s got a partner - actually, he has two of them. The first is a longtime friend, Sandy McDermott, who becomes his lawyer. The second is his lover, a beautiful Brazilian named Eva Miranda, who is also a lawyer, although everyone in the book notices her legs first. Sandy shoulders a lot of the burden of a complicated plot; Eva Miranda flies all around the world, transfers millions from bank to bank, changes clothes and goes shopping when she dares. “A gorgeous lady, with exotic charm and class,” Sandy thinks, with Grisham’s own characteristic grace of style.
Along the way there’s a lot of plot to unravel. “The Partner” may be the most plot-driven of Grisham’s books to date; the others depend more on situation and issues (the death penalty, health insurance). All of Grisham’s familiar villains are back, the people America loves to hate, the slick, smooth-tongued lawyers and the forked-tongued insurance companies.
The system that protects us is fragile and corruptible, but it’s all we have. A strong factual sense of how the system works was a strength of the earlier Grisham books; that element is present again, but the fantasy element continues to grow stronger - even stronger than it was in the last Grisham, “The Runaway Jury.” That was a fairly recondite fantasy about corrupting a jury. This story depends on a fantasy that is almost universal: If only we could get away from it all, escape completely, begin a totally new life, with a new name and enough money to do anything we wanted to.
“At some point in life,” Patrick observes, “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.”
Even the judge in the case envies Patrick. “A bad day on the bench, and he would think of Patrick on a sun-drenched beach reading a novel, sipping a drink, watching the girls.”
Most of the way through “The Partner,” Grisham keeps a firmer hand on the proceedings than he sometimes has in the past; sheer narrative momentum hurries him over the potholes in his plot. He still doesn’t know how to write about women and at points you wonder if he even knows how to write about men. “Even her sweat was cute,” an FBI agent thinks as he watches Patrick’s “widow” during her aerobics. Grisham isn’t really interested in people at all; he’s interested in power.
Grisham once again indulges in some amusing coarse-grained humor. The widow’s boy-toy, “a strong handsome loser,” learns he’s a father when a grinning lawyer tosses him a cigar. New for this writer is an element of tourism. “Home was a powerful magnet. All true Cariocas love their city and consider it specially created by the Almighty.” Grisham stops just short of writing that Rio is a city of exotic charm and class.
On the last page, however, he springs one surprise too many, one for which readers haven’t been adequately prepared. Most are going to feel annoyed and cheated.
Grisham will laugh all the way to the bank. The first print order for this $26.95 novel is 2.8 million copies. Do the math - don’t forget the paperback, film and foreign rights - and we’re talking more than $90 million, precisely Patrick’s nest egg.