The Associate

The Associate is the latest book by John Grisham. From the back cover.~

Kyle McAvoy grew up in his father's small-town law office in York, Pennsylvania. He excelled in college, was elected editor-in-chief of the "Yale Law Journal", and his future has limitless potential.

But Kyle has a secret, a dark one, an episode from college that he has tried to forget. The secret, though, falls into the hands of the wrong people, and Kyle is forced to take a job he doesn't want-even though it's a job most law students can only dream about.

Three months after leaving Yale, Kyle becomes an associate at the largest law firm in the world, where, in addition to practicing law, he is expected to lie, steal, and take part in a scheme that could send him to prison, if not get him killed.

With an unforgettable cast of characters and villains-from Baxter Tate, a drug-addled trust fund kid and possible rapist, to Dale a pretty but seemingly quiet former math teacher who shares Kyle's "cubicle" at the law firm, to two of the most powerful and fiercely competitive defense contractors in the country-and featuring all the twist and turns that have made John Grisham the most popular storyteller in the world, The Associate is vintage Grisham.

I enjoyed The Associate, but didn't think it was in the same class as The Firm, A Time to Kill, or The Pelican Brief, which are still my favorite works by Grisham. The Associate has great characters, and Grisham writes the villains perfectly, to the point that you hate them just when you see their names. I really liked Kyle and was hoping he could find a way out of his mess his life had become. I also really enjoyed the budding relationship between Kyle and Dale, which was even more fun since it was against the rules of the firm for them to date. I did hope for a little bit more at the end, but overall The Associate was a pretty good read.