The Exchange: After The Firm

by John Grisham

Overview

Notes From Your Bookseller

The Firm launched the rapid rise of John Grisham, master of the legal thriller. Now we follow up with the McDeeres — and the corporate intrigue and deadly secrets they can’t escape. If you’re looking for a great new read after binge-watching Suits, start here.

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • John Grisham delivers high-flying international suspense in a stunning legal thriller that marks the return of Mitch McDeere, the brilliant hero of The Firm.

“A breathtaking update on the McDeeres and the life they made . . . Grisham, in vintage form, ratchets up the suspense in this winning sequel.” —The Wall Street Journal

What became of Mitch and Abby McDeere after they exposed the crimes of Memphis law firm Bendini, Lambert & Locke and fled the country? The answer is found in The Exchange, the riveting sequel to The Firm, the blockbuster thriller that launched the career of America’s favorite storyteller.

It is now fifteen years later, and Mitch and Abby are living in Manhattan, where Mitch is a partner at the largest law firm in the world. When a mentor in Rome asks him for a favor that will take him as far as Istanbul and Tripoli, Mitch finds himself at the center of a sinister plot that has worldwide implications. Once again Mitch’s colleagues, friends, and family are targeted. Mitch is a master at staying one staying one step ahead of his adversaries, but this time there’s nowhere to hide.

Don’t miss Framed, John Grisham’s first work of nonfiction since The Innocent Man, and look for his upcoming novel, The Widow!

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780593685600
Publisher:	JG Publishing
Publication date:	09/24/2024
Series:	The Firm Series , #2
Pages:	464
Product dimensions:	4.20(w) x 7.40(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

John Grisham is the author of numerous #1 bestsellers, including The Firm, A Time to Kill, The Rainmaker, The Innocent Man, The Whistler, The Boys from Biloxi, and many more. His books have been translated into nearly fifty languages. Grisham is a two-time winner of the Harper Lee Prize for Legal Fiction and was honored with the Library of Congress Creative Achievement Award for Fiction. Grisham serves on the board of directors of the Innocence Project and Centurion Ministries, two national organizations dedicated to exonerating those who have been wrongfully convicted. Much of his fiction explores deep-seated problems in our criminal justice system. He lives on a farm in central Virginia.

Hometown:

Oxford, Mississippi, and Albemarle County, Virginia

Date of Birth:

February 8, 1955

Place of Birth:

Jonesboro, Arkansas

Education:

B.S., Mississippi State, 1977; J.D., University of Mississippi, 1981

Website:

http://www.jgrisham.com

Read an Excerpt

Chapter 1

On the forty-eighth floor of a glistening tower on the southern tip of Manhattan, Mitch McDeere stood alone in his office and gazed out the window at Battery Park and the busy waters beyond. Boats of all shapes and sizes crisscrossed the harbor. Massive cargo ships laden with containers waited almost motionless. The Staten Island Ferry inched past Ellis Island. A cruise ship packed with tourists headed out to sea. A mega yacht was making a splendid entrance into the city. A brave soul in a fifteen-foot catamaran zigzagged about, dodging everything. A thousand feet above the water no fewer than five helicopters buzzed about like angry hornets. In the far distance, trucks on the Verrazano Bridge stood still, bumper to bumper. Lady Liberty watched it all from her majestic perch. It was a spectacular view that he tried to appreciate at least once each day. Occasionally he succeeded, but most days were too hectic to allow time for such loafing. He was on the clock, his life was ruled by it, just like the hundreds of other lawyers in the building. Scully & Pershing had over two thousand scattered around the world and vainly considered itself to be the premier international firm on the planet. Its New York partners, and Mitch was one, rewarded themselves with larger offices in the heart of the financial district. The firm was now a hundred years old and reeked of prestige, power, and money.

He glanced at his watch and the sightseeing came to an end. A pair of associates knocked and entered for another meeting. They met around a small table as a secretary offered coffee. They declined and she left. Their client was a Finnish shipping company having problems in South Africa. The authorities there had embargoed a freighter packed with electronics from Taiwan. Empty, the ship was worth about a hundred million. Fully loaded, it was worth twice that, and the South Africans were upset over some tariff issues. Mitch had been to Capetown twice in the past year and was not keen to return. After half an hour, he dismissed the associates with a list of instructions, and welcomed another pair.

At 5 p.m. sharp he checked in with his secretary, who was leaving, and walked past the elevators to the stairs. For short rides up and down he avoided the elevators to escape the mindless chitchat of lawyers he knew and didn’t know. He had many friends in the firm, and only a handful of known enemies, and there was always a new wave of fresh associates and eager junior partners with faces and names he was supposed to recognize. Often he did not, nor did he have time to pore over the firm directory and try to memorize them. So many would be gone before he knew their names.

Taking the stairs worked his legs and lungs and always reminded him that he was no longer in college, no longer playing football and intramural basketball and able to do so for hours. He was forty-one and still in decent shape because he watched his diet and skipped lunch at least three times a week while he worked out in the firm’s gym. Another perk for partners only.

He left the stairwell on the forty-second floor and hustled to the office of Willie Backstrom, another partner, but one with the luxury of not billing by the hour. Willie had the enviable position of running the firm’s pro bono programs, and though he kept up with his hours he did not send bills. There was no one to pay them. The lawyers at Scully made plenty of money, especially the partners, and the firm was notorious for its commitment to pro bono work. It volunteered for difficult cases around the world. Every lawyer was required to donate at least 10 percent of his time to various causes, all approved by Willie.

There was an even split down the middle of the firm on the issue of pro bono work. Half the lawyers enjoyed it because it was a welcome break from the stressful grind of representing high-pressure corporate clients. For a few hours a month, a lawyer could represent a real person or a struggling nonprofit and not worry about sending bills and getting paid. The other half paid lip service to the lofty notion of giving back but considered it wasteful. Those 250 hours a year could be better spent making money and improving one’s standing with the various committees that determined who got promoted, who made partner, and who eventually got the boot.

Willie Backstrom kept the peace, which wasn’t really that difficult because no lawyer, regardless of his or her ambition, would ever criticize the firm’s aggressive pro bono programs. Scully even gave annual awards to its lawyers who went beyond the call of duty in service to the less fortunate.

Mitch was currently spending four hours a week working with a homeless shelter in the Bronx and representing clients who were fighting evictions. It was safe, clean office work, which was just what he wanted. Seven months earlier he had watched a death row client in Alabama utter his last words before being executed. He’d spent eight hundred hours over six years trying in vain to save the guy, and watching him die was heartbreaking, the ultimate failure.

Mitch wasn’t sure what Willie wanted, but the fact that he’d been called in was an ominous sign.

Willie was the only lawyer at Scully with a ponytail, and a bad one at that. It was gray and matched his beard, and just a few years before someone higher up would have told him to shave and get a haircut. But the firm was working hard to shed its fossilized image as a white-collar club filled with white men in dark suits. One of its radical changes was the ditching of a dress code. Willie grew hair and whiskers and went about his work in jeans.

Mitch, still in a dark suit but with no tie, sat across the desk as they went through the small talk. Willie finally got around to it with “Say, Mitch, there’s a case down south I want you to take a look at.”

“Please don’t tell me the guy is on death row.”

“The guy is on death row.”

“I can’t do it, Willie. Please. I’ve had two of those in the past five years and both got the needle. My track record is not very good.”

“You did great work, Mitch. No one could have saved those two.”

“I can’t take another one.”

“Will you at least listen?”

Mitch conceded and shrugged. Willie’s fondness for death row cases was legendary and few lawyers at Scully could say no to him. “Okay, I’ll listen.”

“His name is Tad Kearny and he’s got ninety days. A month ago he made the strange decision to fire his lawyers, all of them, and he had quite a team.”

“Sounds crazy.”

“Oh, he is. Off-the-charts crazy, probably legally insane, but Tennessee is pushing hard nonetheless. Ten years ago he shot and killed three undercover narcotics officers in a drug bust that went haywire. Bodies everywhere, total of five died at the scene. Tad almost died, but they managed to save him so they could execute him later.”

Mitch laughed in frustration and said, “And I’m supposed to ride in on a white horse and save the guy? Come on, Willie. Give me something to work with.”

“There’s virtually nothing to work with, except insanity. The problem is that he probably won’t agree to see you.”

“Then why bother?”

“Because we have to try, Mitch, and I think you’re our best bet.”

“I’m still listening.”

“Well, he reminds me a lot of you.”

“Gee thanks.”

“No, seriously. He’s white, your age, and from Dane County, Kentucky.”

For a second Mitch couldn’t respond, then managed to say, “Great. We’re probably cousins.”

“I don’t think so, but his father worked in the coal mines, same as yours. And both died there.”

“My family is off-limits.”

“Sorry. You caught a lucky break and had the brains to get out. Tad did not and before long was involved with drugs, both as a user and a dealer. He and some pals were making a big delivery near Memphis when they were ambushed by narcotics officers. Everybody died but Tad. Looks like his luck has finally run out.”

“No question about his guilt?”

“Certainly not for the jury. The issue is not guilt but insanity. The idea is to have him evaluated by some specialists, our doctors, and file a last-minute Hail Mary. First, though, someone has to go in and talk to the man. Right now he’s not accepting visitors.”

“And you think we’ll bond?”

“It’s a long shot, but why not give it a try?”

Mitch took a deep breath and tried to think of another way out. To pass the time he asked, “Who’s got the case?”

“Well, technically, no one. Tad has become quite the jailhouse lawyer and he filed the necessary papers to terminate his attorneys. Amos Patrick represented him for a long time, one of the best down there. You know Amos?”

“I met him once at a conference. Quite the character.”

“Most death row lawyers are real characters.”

Editorial Reviews

Praise for The Firm, John Grisham’s iconic legal thriller

“Grisham is an absolute master.”—The Washington Post

“Taut, fast and relentless.”—San Francisco Chronicle

“Keeps the reader hooked . . . From the creepy first chapters . . . to the vise-tightening midsection and on to the take-the-money-and-run finale.”—The Wall Street Journal

“[An] ingenious man-in-the-middle thriller.”—Entertainment Weekly

From the Publisher

2023-08-12
In this sequel to The Firm (1991), star attorney Mitch McDeere tries to rustle up ransom for a kidnapped colleague in Libya.

In The Firm, he barely escaped the clutches of the corrupt law firm Bendini, Lambert & Locke. Now it’s 15 years later and Mitch is living in New York and is a partner at Scully & Pershing, the world’s largest law firm. He’s frustrated that his Alabama and Tennessee death row clients keep getting the needle, except for the latest one who supposedly hanged himself in his cell. He doesn’t want to take any more of these cases, so he agrees to help out on a lawsuit for Luca Sandroni, a Scully partner in Rome who’s dying of pancreatic cancer. The client is Lannak, a major Turkish construction company that's suing the government of Libya for an unpaid debt of $400 million. Please let my daughter, Giovanna, come and help you, Luca asks Mitch. She’s an associate in the firm's London branch. It’s 2005, the time of Muammar Gaddafi, who came up with the harebrained idea of building the “Great Gaddafi Bridge in central Libya, over an unnamed river yet to be found,” Luca says. (It’s true!) Mitch plans to see the bridge, but he comes down with a wicked case of food poisoning, so Giovanna volunteers to go instead. Soon she’s been kidnapped, and her guards and driver are murdered. In Manhattan, a mysterious woman tells Mitch’s wife, Abby, that the price of Giovanna’s return is $100 million, and she will die if anyone involves the government or police. Can Scully & Pershing put their hands on that much dough? And who are they dealing with? Mitch isn’t even certain whether Gaddafi is behind the crime or whether it's some unknown gang. Mitch and Abby come across as sympathetic and credible, while other characters are no deeper than they need to be. The story moves at a fast pace, leaving a trail of bodies in its wake.

A tense legal thriller with nary a courtroom scene.

Kirkus Reviews

08/21/2023

Grisham’s disappointing sequel to The Firm, set 15 years after the events of that 1991 blockbuster, isn’t worth the three-decade wait. After extricating himself from a Tennessee law firm run by the mob, Mitch McDeere has begun a new life in New York City with his wife, Abby. Mitch has become a partner at Scully & Pershing, “the premier international firm on the planet,” allowing him and Abby to enjoy a comfortable existence on the Upper West Side with their eight-year-old twin boys. That stability gets shaken when Mitch is sent to Libya to represent Lannak, a Turkish construction company that’s been stiffed hundreds of millions of dollars by Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi. Despite extensive security precautions, Mitch’s team comes under attack by Libyan forces; the fallout claims multiple lives, puts the McDeeres’ twins in peril, and nudges Abby to abandon her post as a cookbook editor to try and save her husband. Grisham conjures some suspense, but nothing here deepens or complicates his original characterizations—it often feels like a somewhat loopy standard-issue legal thriller has been papered over with characters from The Firm. It’s a letdown. Agent: David Gernert, Gernert Company. (Oct.)

Publishers Weekly

Narrator Edoardo Ballerini masterfully narrates this sequel, reacquainting listeners with Mitch and Abby McDeere 15 years after their harrowing misadventures in THE FIRM. Mitch, now a successful partner in the largest law firm in the world, faces an intense kidnapping crisis in Libya involving a Turkish client and an associate of Mitch's. Ballerini leverages his talent with accents as the action moves back and forth from New York to Rome, Libya, Morocco, and Maine. Impressively, Ballerini also finds credible voices for Abby, who plays a big role, and for the McDeeres' twin 8-year-old sons. The more mature Mitch seems to have lost his ingenuity, legal sharpness, and fearlessness while maintaining his persistence and sense of justice. The result is a well-narrated audiobook of a somewhat disappointing story. E.Q. © AudioFile 2023, Portland, Maine

NOVEMBER 2023 - AudioFile