Book #2 Blog Entry Two

The Associate - John Grisham

I wrote my first journal on Digital Fortress, by Dan Brown, but I switched my book to The Associate so that's what I will write blogs 2 and 3 on.

The novel begins telling the story of Kyle McAvoy, who appears to be a clean cut, hardworking law student and citizen. Kyle is the coach of an inner city youth basketball team, and near the end of one of his games, he sees a mysterious man in a suit enter the gym. The man, along with a partner, approaches Kyle after the game, and pressure into talking to them about an alleged rape by Kyle years ago. The men claim to be FBI agents, and after Kyle "checks their stories" he talks to them about the night in question. He can recall nothing after blacking out from drinking too much, but swears he never touched the girl. Kyle gets blackmailed into meeting with another man claiming to be a Pittsburgh prosecutor (where the incident took place) and reveals to him everything about his family life, job happenings, and the night in question. Most of all, Kyle does not want these men to publicize the alleged rape, fearing his life will go down the tubes. All this seems to be at a breaking point,until the "prosecutor" reveals to Kyle the truth: his "prosecutor" occupation, the "FBI men"--none of them are actually who they said they were. In fact, they work at a law firm, and they created this ploy to recruit Kyle to come work for them. (cue dramatic music)

Only four chapters into this book, and I am reeeeeally hooked. My grandma was the one who recommended it to me, and so far, I've eaten up every word Grisham has written. Kyle is exactly the prototype of protagonist I enjoy--clever, curious, and full of potential to do good. However, I crave seeing him be swallowed up by the dark side of life, and although I do want him to come out on top, I've found that even more so I want to simply know what happens next, regardless of the consequences. To be honest, I don't have any predictions for this novel, or at least not yet. With the Dan Brown novels that I've read before, although I obviously can't predict what happens next, I can more or less play out much of the novel in terms of ups and downs for the protagonist, based on other Dan Brown novels that I've read. However, I may find out that Grisham doesn't always reserve happy endings for his protagonists, which would be just fine with me. I'm anxious to see how the rest of the book goes, so if it's alright with you, I'm gonna end this journal now and go read.