The Exchange by John Grisham

Published by Doubleday on October 17, 2023

Mitch McDeere is the protagonist in John Grisham’s The Firm, a novel most readers seem to like more than I do (the movie, I thought, corrected the novel’s weak ending). Mitch McDeere is back in The Exchange, another novel that suffers from a disappointing ending.

Mitch and his wife fled from Memphis to avoid a revenge killing for bringing down a corrupt law firm — the story told in The Firm — and hid in Italy for a time. When the coast seemed clear, Mitch took a position in the New York office of the nation’s largest international law firm. Now it’s 2005, fifteen years after The Firm, and Mitch is a well-paid partner who travels the world litigating various business disputes, usually in an arbitration forum.

The firm’s Italian office represents a Turkish construction company that built a billion-dollar bridge over nothing in Libya, an ego-stroke project of Ghaddafi in which the dictator lost interest after the failure of a corresponding plan to divert a river so it would flow under the bridge.

Libya still owes the construction company $400,000 and isn’t paying. The head of the Italian office brought a claim against Libya in an international arbitration forum, but that lawyer is dying of cancer. He brings in Mitch to take over the case and persuades him to assign his daughter Giovanna, a young lawyer who works in the London office, to help him.

Mitch and Giovanna travel to Libya to rack up billable hours gazing at the  bridge. Giovanni is kidnapped on a field trip. The drivers and security specialists who accompanied her are beheaded or hung or otherwise executed in gruesome fashion.

Mitch is fortunate to have avoided the kidnapping/execution, but his convenient illness (doctors apparently never know why he alone got food poisoning, if that’s what it was) and his decision to send Giovanna to do his bridge gazing made little sense. I thought Grisham was setting up a deeper mystery that never materialized.

The novel begins with Mitch’s brief pro bono assignment to a death penalty appeal in Tennessee that ends when the prisoner commits suicide. I was hoping this might be a death penalty novel — that’s Grisham’s strength, in my view — but the opening quickly gives way to the story in Libya. I again thought Grisham was setting up a plot twist and the novel would circle back to Memphis. Again, I was disappointed.

Instead, the story is a fairly ordinary thriller about someone (maybe terrorists, maybe not) who kidnaps a dual citizen of the UK and Italy and threatens to kill her if a $100 million ransom isn’t paid. Mitch spends most of the novel flying here and there, trying to raise the ransom money from governments that pretend not to negotiate with terrorists but do so for the right hostage. Some of the novel’s best scenes involve Mitch’s frustration with the management committee of his law firm, which won’t risk taking out a line of credit to fund a large chunk of the ransom because that might reduce the firm’s quarterly profits.

Mitch’s wife becomes the contact point when the payoff instructions are delivered. The scenes involving Mitch’s terrified wife are tense and deftly executed.

Unfortunately, the rest of the novel feels like a half-told story. The kidnappers seem to know quite a bit about Mitch. Do they have a contact in his firm? Are they Americans seeking revenge for Mitch’s ratting out the Memphis firm? Who knows? Grisham seemed so set up several tantalizing possibilities, then leaves every question unanswered. The result is only a partially satisfying novel. I recommend The Exchange for its ability to build tension, but not for a story that feels like it should have been so much more.

RECOMMENDED WITH RESERVATIONS

Comments

[Grisham]

The Exchange very disappointing . Can’t believe Grisham just let story die. It’s like he had no where to go after the ransom paid. It was so badly ended. Who were the terrorises why was Goavanni there one minute and not the next. How was the final contact connected to the terrirusts it were they kidnapped s. How were they tracking the McDeers. Who was the traitor that linked NcDeers and all their movements to the kidnapped. It was so loose, no connective tied on the important characters. Poor poor poor latter part of book and the beginning was so shallow didn’t fit into anything with the rest of the book. This felt like an inexperienced writer. Very disappointing. Never should have spent the money.

[Maryanne Reinhardt]

Not one question answered. Terrible. Have no idea why Giovanna was targeted, how the firm was connected, who infiltrated to provide surveillance. Took him back to Memphis and Caymans but so what! Had no real place in the story or effects on the plot. Very disappointing second half of the book.

[Cornelius Martin]

NOT A SEQUEL JUST A REVIVAL
This was a good but long and drawn out story of international intrigue involving the long-missing Mitch McDeere which never surfaced credibly as any type of sequel to The Firm (as advertised) since nothing related to The Firm's original storyline ever really entered into the current storyline as most readers expected it would?
The current story offers a brief early appearance of one of Mitch's old Memphis lawyer pals from The Firm, who he has a catch-up conversation with to explain some transition details to the present, but this dies on the vine so quickly it's unclear what the point was in bringing it up except to provide a forum for Mitch to explain where he'd been for 15 years? But the current story never connects to or with this in any way and the old pal disappears never to be heard from again in any surprise plot twist. As does Mitch's pro bono death row client who commits suicide before Mitch even meets him?
The story then just heads out on its own with no connection to The Firm or its old partners secret business or mafia connections, explaining nothing further about that or making any connection to the present, and not even mentioning it indirectly as having anything to do with the current story.
The reader is waiting for the rest of the long-winded storyline of The Exchange for something to come up that connects the dots of the present drama to the old Firm or its nefarious owners.... but nothing...ever. The sequel notion is just an imaginary one someone made up that we all bought without question since it would make for an interesting storyline. Instead, we follow Mitch & wife Abby's adventure to get a completely unrelated job done while readers wonder when the sequel plot twist will appear, which it never does.
Absent the sequel, the story isn't really that good and doesn't make that much sense as readers don't really get why it's happening or understand the odd ending when it all seems to work out well.This could be the beginning of a sequel if Grisham cares to pull it together in a next book and make some actual connections to The Firm, but as it stands this is just a story about the return of the McDeeres which raises a lot more questions than it answers. Seems like poor scripting of a story that could be made a lot more interesting.