I’ve been a fan of John Grisham since middle school. I don’t remember which one I read first—The Firm, The Pelican Brief, The Rainmaker, or The Runaway Jury—because of how quickly I read them: one after other, as fast as I could. I must say, however, I’m not impressed by The Broker.

All successful Grisham novels have some things in common. First, they are about lawyers or, at the very least, directly and constantly tie in with some aspect of the law. Perhaps an insurance company is sued, a law student’s brief unravels a conspiracy theory, three convicted judges run their own court in prison, a lawyer must find the executor of a will, a freshly-graduated law student joins a Mafia-run firm, or a small town is captivated by a fishy murder trial. The only exception to this rule has been Skipping Christmas, which didn’t pretend to be a serious novel anyway. But The Broker does pretend.

Lawyers and the law itself do not dominate the plot. Grisham tries again (unsuccessfully) to play around with a mysterious wheelchair-bound CIA director named Teddy Maynard, who was first introduced in The Brethren. Grisham seems to fashion this lovable bear after J. Edgar Hoover, as far as power goes. He resembles Stalin as far as deadly deeds go, and Karl Rove as far as behind-the-scenes influence goes.

Teddy, supposedly, has been around Washington for so long that he wields an incredible amount of clout. This time, the evil director tricks the president into pardoning Joel Backman, and sends Backman to Italy under CIA supervision. There he is taught Italian while various spy agencies send assassins to kill him. The whole point of the exercise is for Teddy to find out who kills Backman, with the hope of unraveling a mystery sparked by the theft of some technology many, many years ago. Anyone who thinks the CIA is this clever obviously hasn’t seen the Duelfer report.

Another thing all Grisham successes have in common is that many things happen in them. People go places, people uncover new things, people are attacked, people hire people to do bad things, people hire people to do good things, and more than just the main character’s mind is complicated. For example, think back to Avery Tolar in The Firm, played by Gene Hackman in the movie of the same name. Now that was an interesting character.

Despite my harsh critique, this is still a good book. Grisham is a good writer, pure and simple. He somehow turns, watching Joel Backman learn Italian and prowl around Europe into an interesting read. Somehow the book kept me up late into the night; perhaps it is the mouth-watering descriptions of cuisine in Italian restaurants. The whole idea of this technology being stolen (sorry, don’t want to give too much away) also piqued my curiosity, as did the determination of who it was stolen from and who is trying to retrieve it.

The book is all very interesting, but not very complicated. Fans of Frederick Forysth will be left scratching their heads at the end, wondering why they bought this book. Some spy-thriller that was!

Grisham does provide some thinly veiled political commentary. In time of need, a certain character turns to the Defense Intelligence Agency, not the CIA. The fact that fifteen-some agencies make up the intelligence community is denounced by a fictional and yet venerable senator. Joel Backman at one point encounters a professor still attached to Communism and says: “Seems to have run its course, don’t you think? Not such a great idea after all.”

But really now, Grisham needs to stick with his field of expertise: the law. It has served him well before. While I can respect a man who wants to experiment with new things, let’s get back to the legal thrillers.