Perilous proceedings

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 09/12/2023 (1052 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Have you fretted endlessly lo these 32 years over what happened to Mitch and Abby McDeere when they fled after exposing that his Memphis law firm was laundering money for the Chicago mob?

Lawyer/author John Grisham has given us the young couple’s status 15 years later by churning out The Exchange: After the Firm.

The Firm was a runaway bestseller that established Grisham’s career as a murder mystery author whose books usually featured idealistic young lawyers, often in the southern U.S. The movie version starred Tom Cruise as Mitch and was a runaway hit as well.

Turns out the McDeeres had friends with boats and refuges on idyllic tropical isles where they hid out before taking up the good life in Italy — not quite in Tuscan villas, but you get the picture — before Mitch got a new job in London.

His Harvard law degree got him in the door, Mitch aced the interview and here we are with Mitch a partner in the world’s largest law firm, based in New York, and Abby a senior editor at a publishing house. Filthy rich, with twin eight-year-old boys.

Oh, and after a brief recap of what happened to the villains in The Firm, we’re off on our story.

Keep in mind that Grisham expects us to admire Mitch and Abby and to feel sympathy for their plight.

The law firm has offices all over the world and represents a gigantic Turkish construction company which built a bridge in the Sahara Desert for Col.Gadhafi, who thought he could unleash underground water to create a river that would flow under the bridge.

No water, no river under the bridge to nowhere, Gadhafi got bored and reneged on the $400 million he still owed the client. So Mitch gets assigned to take the Libyan government before an international arbitration panel in Geneva, reckoning that the Libyan military needs outside professionals a lot more than Gadhafi needs his $400 million.

You just know there’s a “but” coming, right?

Stop here if you prefer not to know any more. (Pause while you decide.)

Something goes dreadfully wrong and a superstar young associate who’s the daughter of the head of the firm’s Italian branch is in the hands of murderous terrorists unknown.

Now Mitch’s job isn’t just to get Gadhafi to pay up, but to find the missing lawyer, negotiate with the terrorists, gather the nine-figure ransom and exchange the money for the kidnap victim.

That sounds a lot more exciting than Grisham actually writes it.

Your book club members will have to stare into their wine glasses and ponder whether they see Mitch and Abby as admirable and sympathetic characters. How do they feel about Big Law?

Mitch and Abby send their kids to a private school in Manhattan, tuition $57,000 a year. That’s for each kid. And there’s the spiffy condo in Manhattan.

Mitch may dazzle clients with his Tom Cruise grin, but Grisham points out that all the legal grunt work gets done by young graduates of America’s finest law schools working 100 hours a week in the faint hope they’ll survive and slowly work up to Mitch’s level.

Mitch flits back and forth over the Atlantic and Mediterranean in business class and private jets, everyone stays in the glitziest of hotels, eats in restaurants with three Michelin stars. The law firm employs its own security forces drawn from the West’s military elite, hires even more local clandestine forces, bribes whoever needs bribing. As Grisham has Mitch note, it all gets billed back to the client.

One wonders at what point the expenses are costlier than the ransom demand.

You’ll pick up on clues that show just how clever a reader you are — you’ll say a-ha, Grisham is laying a trail that sharp readers have already sleuthed.

You’ll be disappointed.

Why does only Mitch get food poisoning in Libya, which prevents his going to the bridge? Why did they drive across the desert when they had a helicopter? We never find out.

Grisham does seem to be leading us down the path: all obvious signs point to the terrorists being a desert warlord and his bandits, but how does such a motley crew of anti-government rebels run a sophisticated surveillance operation in New York City, move invisibly about major world cities and airports, silently blow up buildings in world capitals, know Mitch’s secrets about the Cayman Islands?

You’ll suspect the terrorists are much more than Sahara outlaws. Suspect all you want, Grisham doesn’t tell us.

And the ending? You may be shaking your head and going, “Seriously, John?”

Maybe Grisham will explain all to us if he follows up with where the McDeeres are now. Maybe.

Retired Free Press reporter Nick Martin is glad he didn’t use Mitch McDeere’s firm buying a condo; he shudders at what would have been billed back to the client.