Over twenty years ago I saw a fat paperback with an interesting cover depicting a businessman caught in strings above his head. That book, The Firm, was an absorbing thriller about a young lawyer who begins working at a boutique tax firm, only to find that it’s tightly connected with the Mafia. For me and millions of other readers, The Firm was an introduction to John Grisham as breakout star in the world of legal fiction, building such a reputation in the 1990s and early 2000s that he has been able to coast on it since. The Exchange livens things up a bit by taking readers into the world of international law and arbitration (with a terrorist state, no less), but its use of Mitch McDeere from The Firm is disingenuous and hollow, serving no point but bait for we schmucks, the consumer-readers. Mitch is the character from The Firm, fifteen years later, but his status as a man who took down a Mafia firm has no bearing on the plot whatsoever beyond making him uncomfortable when he goes down to Memphis to have a pro bono case pitched at him. (This entire sequence is completely irrelevant: the case subject involved is Epsteined, and despite a really interesting potential plot being wiggled before the reader, Mitch is soon back in New York to start this novel’s story.) The novelty of this book — the plot of which involves a kidnapped lawyer (an Italian beauty, because pretty women and children make the best hostages) being taken by terrorists does a fair bit of service to make the book more interesting than its actual writing. It’s unusual terrain for Grisham, to say the least, though the teased-at story involving DEA agents who were ambushing and murdering drug carriers would have been more interesting, in my opinion. I was fully prepared to see Mitch fighting for justice and defying threats from goonie boys, but I suppose that’s more Greg Iles’ style. Truth be told, not much happens in The Exchange after the first hundred pages, and most of what happened before was wholly irrelevent to the plot. We do get more information into Mitch and Abby’s background, though, and Abby pops out as a character in her own right when the terrorists choose to approach her to convey ransom demands to Mitch. Why they wouldn’t just contact Mitch is a question for Grisham’s nonexistent editor, but Abby was a strong part of Mitch’s efforts to take down the Mafia in The Firm, and I suppose he thought readers would be offended if she was relegated to the background here. The book was a servicable if disappointing diversion that achieved such benign mediocrity by the international aspects of its story.