oel Backman, the broker, is granted a pardon by outgoing president, to draw out ? For the CIA. Lots of Italian lessons...
Fun easy read, but not the usual depth expected from JG ( )

John
Grisham, always readable and this is no exception. Joel Backman, pardoned from prison by president is set up with new identity and then CIA sits back and waits to see who will kill him. ( )

John Grisham has brought us a succession of nail-biting thrillers including A Time to Kill, The Firm, The Partner (3.5 stars) and The Street Lawyer (4.0 stars). The Broker, however, turns out to be a thriller without very many thrills. There are a couple moments of tension, but they are so mild and scattered that they don’t provide any real trepidation. This seems strange considering the plot of the book has nearly every intelligence agency in the world intent on killing the main character. As if that were not enough, Joel Backman’s own CIA handlers want him dead. To top it off, Joel has little money and even less training, yet he appears more than capable of strolling right past everyone with surprising little effort even though everyone knows where he is. I never felt like he was in any kind of real jeopardy even when he should have been in all kinds of real jeopardy. Instead, most of the forces against him just fall out of the story without any explanation. At one point, Grisham describes in detail one of the most diabolical assassins in the world, only to leave him out of the rest of the story. I suppose he must have gotten lost.

Instead of a thriller, the meat of the book is really a character piece where we watch Joel try to blend into the northern Italian college town of Bologna. Taking the name ‘Marco,’ he learns to speak, dress and – more than anything – eat like a native Italian. This turns out to be the strongest part of the book. Grisham does a nice job of painting a picture of the northern Italian lifestyle and giving a guided tour of its history that feel very organic to the story. In fact, if he had written something akin to A Painted House, it might have been a fascinating character study in a beautiful location. Unfortunately, he stuffed it inside of an espionage thriller that simply didn’t come off. The plot holes and anticlimactic ending certainly didn’t do the story any favors, either. But while I can’t say that I really liked the book, I can’t say that I disliked it either. There was something about the character of Joel Backman and his attempt to integrate with Italian life that made the story tolerable. Also, Grisham’s polished writing moves along easily which prevents the story from becoming a monotonous bore. If it is already sitting on one of your shelves and you want to learn some things about northern Italy, it might still be worth sitting down with it. However, it is not one of Grisham’s better books. ( )

Not a bad story, but reading all the Italian dialog (followed by English translations) got annoying after awhile. ( )

I've never been much of a Grisham fan, just never thought I'd enjoy his books. About a year ago I picked up a pile of Grisham books for cheap. It's taken me a year, but I've now finished my second Grisham novel. I must say this was enjoyable. Only thing wrong with this, is the ending. While it wrapped up nicely in once sense, it left a lot of dangling threads. This seems more like book 1 of a trilogy or something instead of a standalone. But nevertheless, I enjoyed this and will read my way through the rest of the Grisham novels sitting on my shelf over the next year or so. ( )