urnishing a guide at the end of Mitch’s great escape. Furthermore, Abbey, Mitch’s devoted wife pretends to leave him, spending weeks away from Mitch, apparently without much apprehension. All of these people who have helped Mitch seem to have reasons for doing so, but why does Mitch have a vendetta against the firm? Why does he start poking his nose in where it doesn’t belong? Surely he is not afraid that Wayne Tarrance, the characteristically dim-witted, overconfident FBI agent. There is little character development to Mitchell Y. McDeere; no more than he grew up in a broken home, graduated from Harvard after hard work, and refused to check up on his mother. Grisham examines none of the motives of this handsome young lawyer. In truth, Grisham does not develop any of the characters to their full potential. He leaves them lifeless and uninteresting. Every character, the scheming mob, the conventional FBI agent, and the righteous fresh lawyer, is stereotypical of the standard overrated Hollywood film role. More character enrichment would make The Firm a better-quality novel.Contrary to the raving reviews touted inside the cover, this novel is neither intelligent nor suspenseful. There is little in the way of a plot line; the bad guys are chasing the good guys, the good guys are pursuing the bad guys, and everyone spies on the other. The Firm gained its esteem from the elaborate, but predictable, escape scene and the amount of money involved in it, not from any lawyerly insight from John Grisham....
