“The Associate”, John Grisham

London Heathrow Terminal 2 has almost no redeeming features, even the bookshop being something of a tawdry ill organised affair. It does however provide airport exclusives, which always have a certain appeal, and the usual two for 20 pounds deal means there's scope for a degree of adventurism in book choice. John Grisham's probably not much of an adventure, but given the patchy response to some of his recent work, picking up “The Associate” wasn't the no-brainer that other book purchases have been.

Through 2005 I went through my first real Grisham phase, raiding charity shops across South London in search of battered copies, and accepting their basic formulaic nature, predominantly found it a rewarding enough way to while away a few hours. “The Associate” in no way is a departure from the common basic theme that has served Grisham well in the past, the tale of the idealistic young lawyer, corrupted by law's misapplication, leading to ultimate redemption, surrendering the trappings of richness for a more wholesome approach to life.

A small area of differentiation in “The Associate” is that the protagonist, Kyle McAvoy, is a flawed character to start with and initially it is hard to warm to him – the skeletons in his closet aren't particularly pleasant, and his protestations that he wants to go and earnestly work on behalf of immigrants in Virginia rings a touch false. These flaws in his character make plausible the hook whereby he is blackmailed and pushed into the Wall St corporate law he claims to be trying to avoid.

The hidden manipulators pulling McAvoy's strings are more faceless than usual, and this actually adds a lot to the book. The murkiness of their motive, and the fact that many elements with them are left unresolved avoids the book being too pat. Grisham performs at his best building a sense of menace surrounding 'Bennie' and his ability to reach into people's lives, and by leaving much unwritten, allows the reader the readily fill in the blanks quite possibly more effectively than a more detailed description might allow for.

Where Grisham falls down a touch is in his description of the central legal case that drives the plot. While in actual fact this is largely inconsequential, the complex defence contract giving rise to the enormous controversial lawsuit of interest to 'Bennie' doesn't ring true and has the feel of an author out of their depth and struggling to explain it. This is in direct contrast to the aplomb with which Grisham has handled subjects like tobacco and firearms in previous works.

Reading John Grisham seldom offers much encouragement towards a legal career, and “The Associate”, more than usual, paints a very bleak picture of the profession. The reality of legal life beyond the large salaries and luxurious public facing rooms is shown to be tawdry, venal, and thoroughly unappealing.

“The Associate” has been likened Grisham's breakthrough work, “The Firm”, and particularly feels like a filmscript in waiting. McAvoy should be easy to cast, there are clear acts and scenes that could readily transition to screen, and critically the book is brief enough to not have to be cut to shreds to fit it into a two hour window offered by Hollywood.

Written with possibly more than half an eye on the screen adaptation, “The Associate” isn't a great book. It's very linear, the majority of the characters are shallow and undeveloped, and the plot fairly simple. While I'm firmly of the opinion that 'twists' are not obligatory in fiction, the absence of one here is felt. To a reader familiar with Grisham this is a very predictable work and few surprises are encountered on the way. That said, while it lasts it's an engaging read. Started as the plane pushed back at Frankfurt airport on Friday, it was well on its way by the time Heathrow was reached, and readily completed by the end of the weekend. This doesn't however mask the fact that ultimately “The Associate” is a forgettable book. I am under no illusions that it will quickly be recycled back to a charity shop, and in a few months time it will be a struggle to differentiate it from most of Grisham's other work. Having recently read Gimenenz's “Common Lawyer” one can't help thinking that the position of pre-eminent legal thriller writer might have shifted.

“The Doomsday Prophecy”, Scott Mariani

Like so many books in the 'thriller' genre, it's hard to escape the conclusion with Scott Mariani's "The Doomsday Prophecy" that you are dealing with something very silly indeed. I'm not saying this to be rude about books such as this, and indeed this is exactly the sort of material that helped me make the leap from children's fiction something a little more adult (if not grown up) when an aunt won a copy of Clive Cussler's "Deep Six" in 1985 and pointed it in my general direction. Guiltily, "The Doomsday Prophecy" really is rather good, but it does help to leave preconceptions at the door, and overcome any nagging embarrasment one might feel at reading something that probably wasn't put on the planet to make you a better person.

Scott Mariani has clearly been picked up by editors desperate to jump on the Dan Brown bandwagon, wrapping the tradition thriller/adventure in the garb of the grand historical conspiracy. As others out there have pointed out, there's nothing particularly new in this, Umberto Eco doing it to great effect in "Foucault's Pendulum" - which is still a realistic contender for my Desert Island book, however where Eco laid claim to the literary high ground, works like this are much more in the line of the penny dreadful. For all that, Mariani executes his storytelling really rather well; the pace of plot is relentless, in Ben Hope he's built a reasonably rounded central character who, if a little superhero like, is perfectly likeable, and critically, his plots are built around characters rather than falling into the easy trap of relying on a plethora of unlikely gadgets to drive interest.

The central failings of Dan Brown, namely the scale of the conspiracy, the utterly formulaic nature of the plots, and the need to cram absolutely everything that happens into a 24 hour period, are neatly avoided in "The Doomsday Prophecy". For all that Ben Hope has superman like tendencies, he's not without flaws and vulnerabilities, and while there is the perhaps obligatory level of extreme peril, the main plot device is, one discovers, pleasingly mundane and refreshingly non-earth shattering. There probably is a formula at work here, but like watching "24" the plot has sufficient momentum and the set pieces are executed with such drama and panache that any predictability is effectively masked, and occasionally clunky language can be overlooked - although I am more or less certain there's no real need for "if it comes down to a sniper-counter-sniper situation, I have evidence that proves to me you're just about the best guy in the world for this job".

Scott Mariani has a prodigious work rate. Since the publication of "The Alchemist's Secret" in 2008 he's pumped out a further two Ben Hope books, with a fourth on the way scheduled for July 2009. It's no surprise really to find that his other work has been a guide to how to write a thriller, and herein he makes the key point to understanding this as a genre. His point that "a thriller writer doesn't need to have much in the way of literary pretensions - as a matter of fact these may be more of hinderance than a help" really does cut to the heart of the concept, and probably helps us as readers as much as it does aspiring writers. I can't help wishing that there wasn't a gushing endorsement from "Closer" on the cover, and the pictorial key on the back (pictured) really does make me despair about how publishers are communicating with their readers, but that doesn't alter the fact that in its time and place a pot boiler like "The Doomsday Prophecy" is an utterly pleasurable way of keeping one simultaneously off the street and, let's be honest here, entertained.

I appreciate publishers have to use innovative methods to
tempt readers in, but is this graphic really necessary?