The Broker - John Grisham (1 of 5 Contrived Plot Lines)

You might find this surprising, but this is my first encounter with a John Grisham book. And frankly, I was not impressed at all. If all his books are this bad, I'm unsure why his publisher continues to speak to him. The copy I got from the library was the abridged audio version. Last time I checked, abridgements are attempts to take out all of the boring parts. Now, if the abridged version was more mind numbing than watching paint dry, what does that say about the original? Has anyone read the original? Did the editor just happen to take out the good stuff this time by mistake?... And excuse me, was that supposed to be an ending? The conclusion to The Broker, well, conclusion is too generous, the last page of The Broker was even worse than the second Pirates of the Caribbean. Is there a sequel to The Broker or was that really the end?

[Jake takes deep breaths while he counts down from ten.]

The Broker begins with a fictional president of the United States leaving office. On his last night as president, he pardons an attorney who has been sitting in a maximum security prison for six years. The attorney was charged with trying to sell secrets to foreign governments about a secret spy satellite network floating in space. The CIA plans to free him, and then wait to see who kills him, in order to discover the creator of the satellites.

Now, this plot might have a lot of potential. It might play out much like the Borne Identity books/movies. But Grisham's execution is absolutely terrible. Once the CIA dumps the attorney in Italy I was expecting all kinds of car chases, gadgets and double crossing secret agents. Um...nope, just page after page of boring bureaucrats moving him from safe house to safe house and teaching him Italian. The plot is dull. The characters are dry. The conclusion is nonexistent. This book apparently was number one on the New York Times Best Seller list back in 2005. Why? Did I uh...miss something?