THE BROKER
By John Grisham.
357 pp. Doubleday. $27.95.
There are risks in devising a
''ripped from the headlines'' political thriller, especially when it is written
on the eve of a presidential election and published in its aftermath. Things
happen. John Grisham, the master of popular legal fiction, begins his tale of
high-tech international political intrigue with the re-election defeat of a failed
president who ''read hardly anything -- books, newspapers, magazines. Certainly
not legislation, policies, treaties or daily briefings. He'd often had trouble
reading his own speeches.''
The outgoing president is by all
accounts ''an idiot, but . . . a clean one.'' His top political operative, on
the other hand, is corrupt to the core. If all this sounds familiar to
blue-state voters, the author assures us in a note that ''it's all fiction,
folks.'' The antihero of the plot is a convicted Washington power broker and
erstwhile king of the Capitol Hill lobbyists who has been serving a long term
of imprisonment for his role in trying to broker a billion-dollar deal for some
software that controls the newest, most secret spy-in-the-sky satellite system.
Who put the satellite up there and who was trying to buy the software we don't
know -- at least not yet. The aging director of central intelligence arranges
for ''the broker'' to be pardoned by the lame-duck president, so that he can
serve as ''bait.'' The intended catch is the intelligence service of the
country that will kill him -- the country that has the greatest stake in the
satellite software. The C.I.A. suspects, well, the usual suspects: the Chinese,
the Israelis, the Saudis, the Russians. But they don't know which of them will
try to eliminate the broker. Each has the motive, the means and the
opportunity, but only one will take the bait. So they set him free -- or not
quite free! -- and watch to see who makes the kill. It's a bit like a board
game -- Colonel Mustard in the dining room with a candlestick -- but the stakes
are much higher for the C.I.A., the broker and the other intelligence agencies.
The broker, of course, has his own
ideas. He realizes he is the cheese in this cat-and-mouse game, and he has no
intention of parading around in full view with a target painted on his back. If
anyone knows how to out-wheel-and-deal the wheeler-dealers of the C.I.A., he
certainly does, or so he believes.
The C.I.A. ''hides'' the broker in
Bologna, where the novel is largely set. The spy-versus-spy intrigue is well
constructed and fast-paced, as the broker tries to evade both his C.I.A.
''protectors'' and the colorful array of foreign intel agents, with license to
kill, who are trying to terminate him. But for those expecting any kind of a
legal thriller, this is not it. There are no real lawyers (the broker had a
license to practice law, but practiced lobbying instead), no judges, no jurors
and no courtroom drama. This may not disappoint all Grisham readers, since for
Grisham law has always been part politics, part pyrotechnics and part passion.
His lawyer characters often pack heat, are adept at car chases and win more by
their street smarts than their legal research skills. But some, like me, will
miss the traditional Grisham: the musty courtrooms presided over by bigoted and
besotted judges, the old-timer practitioners with their cracker-barrel wisdom
and the antihero lawyers with questionable ethics but jugular instincts.
I have long been a Grisham reader.
I have to be. So many of my students come to law school primed by Grisham
novels -- and the movies based on them -- as their introduction to the practice
of law. In many ways, it is a better introduction than high school civics and
college political science courses that preach an incorruptible legal system --
especially its judiciary -- that always remains above politics. Grisham's
lawyers and judges may be a bit over the top, but they are often closer to the
real thing than the hagiographies of our ''sainted'' judges that pass for
judicial biography.
''The Broker'' contains many of the
same elements as Grisham's legal thrillers -- a flawed antihero, an unusual
love story, a father-son reunion, betrayal, renewal, guns, guts and chases --
but its central drama focuses on high-tech satellites and state-of-the-art
Internet communication. As Grisham acknowledges in an author's note, these
technical subjects aren't within his own area of expertise:
''My background is law, certainly
not satellites or espionage. I'm more terrified of high-tech electronic gadgets
today than a year ago. . . . I know very little about spies, electronic
surveillance, satellite phones, smartphones, bugs, wires, mikes and the people
who use them. If something in this novel approaches accuracy, it's probably a
mistake.''
And it shows. The feel of the
action is distant from the comfortable familiarity a reader immediately gets
from a Grisham legal thriller. The sharp turns of phrase, as well as of
speeding cars, are vintage Grisham, but the texture of the characters,
especially the politicians, is not nearly as palpable.
Political thrillers are harder to
write than legal thrillers. That's why there are so few really good ones being
published these days. The law lends itself to dramatic confrontation: the
classic trial, the unpredictable jury, the craft of cross-examination, the
surprise witness, the newly discovered evidence, the death-house drama, the
larger-than-life courtroom gladiators. The trial has been the focus of
literature since Abraham argued with God over the sinners of Sodom, Thomas More
defended his refusal to support the king, Ivan Karamazov denied the patricide
and Joseph K. tried to comprehend the charges against him.
There are few writers today capable
of producing political novels of the quality of those once written by C. P.
Snow and Alan Drury. Our best contemporary political novelist, Richard North
Patterson, spends months interviewing the politicians upon whom he loosely
bases his characters. He also masters the political issues he writes about --
abortion, gun control, capital punishment. Compared with Patterson's likelife
presidents, senators, congressmen and lobbyists, Grisham's political characters
are stick figures -- entirely predictable stereotypes without flesh and blood.
So, if you're expecting a great
legal thriller, pick up an earlier Grisham novel. If you want a great political
thriller, there are wonderful ones by Snow, Drury and Patterson. But if you
will be satisfied with a workmanlike spy-cum-politics novel, with some
first-rate cloak and dagger intrigue, an uplifting vignette of father-son
redemption and a poignant pastiche of unrequited love, then ''The Broker'' is
the book for you.