The Exchange: After the Firm, is John Grisham’s latest novel. Other than containing the characters Mitch and Abby McDeere from The Firm, in no way is it a sequel, notwithstanding the reviewers and jacket blurbs saying so. Years after The Firm. Mitch has improbably become an important and rich Manhattan lawyer in an international firm while somehow keeping a low profile in case mobsters from his Memphis days come looking for him. A terrorist group trying to overthrow Gaddafi in Libya kidnaps a female lawyer working with Mitch on a lawsuit in Libya. For some reason, Abby, back in NYC, is chosen by the bad guys as the go-between in ransom demands. The terrorists are surveilling Mitch and Abby worldwide, which should imply some sort of planning and an elaborate and developed intelligence network. I kept waiting for it all to be tied back to the mobsters behind The Firm in Memphis, but that never happened. Mostly the novel is watching Mitch fly from city to city, eat and drink at fancy locales, and ask rich people to ante up to the ransom fund. Maybe they will, maybe they won’t. The reviews are mixed. Here’s a collection of reviews from Bookmarks:
