The Associate and Underbelly: a tale of two cities

This week, we received John Grisham’s latest novel, “The Associate”. Fantastic Fiction describes the plot as follows: “Kyle McAvoy grew up in his father's small-town law office in York, Pennsylvania. He excelled in college, was elected editor-in-chief of The Yale Law Journal, and his future has limitless potential. But Kyle has a secret, a dark one, an episode from college that he has tried to forget. The secret, though, falls into the hands of the wrong people, and Kyle is forced to take a job he doesn't want - even though it's a job most law students can only dream about.

Three months after leaving Yale, Kyle becomes an associate at the largest law firm in the world, where, in addition to practicing law, he is expected to lie, steal, and take part in a scheme that could send him to prison, if not get him killed. With an unforgettable cast of characters and villains - from Baxter Tate, a drug-addled trust fund kid and possible rapist, to Dale, a pretty but seemingly quiet former math teacher who shares Kyle's 'cubicle' at the law firm, to two of the most powerful and fiercely competitive defense contractors in the country - and featuring all the twists and turns that have made John Grisham the most popular storyteller in the world, “The Associate” is vintage Grisham.” It will be interesting to hear whether Gilgandra readers enjoy this new book, which Paramount will be adapting as a film, with Shia LaBoeuf already signed to play Kyle McAvoy.

Another new book this week is “Underbelly: a tale of two cities”. Written by John Silvester and Andrew Rule, this is the book of the current TV series, showing on the Nine network. The Age reported on 11 February that the first episode of Underbelly: A Tale of Two Cities notched a national audience of 2.58 million, with most of that audience — 2.42 million people — staying tuned for the second instalment. There has been criticism that there are scenes in the series involving the Griffith mafia which are misleading and incorrect. The book is likely to be equally controversial.