John Grisham is known for writing fast-paced escapism novels consisting of entertainment value more than of realism. "The Associate" deals with Kyle McAvoy, an ambitious law student in his last semester who later becomes an associate with one of the largest law firms in the world. However, not everything takes course as planned - Kyle is confronted with an unsettling detail of his past, a girl who claims to have been raped by two of his friends while Kyle himself watched dead drunk. A mysterious undercover agent blackmails him with this information and forces Kyle to spy on his new employers and to pass important data if he does not want his future to be destroyed by one fateful night. 
 Initially, I went to our local library, knowing they have tons of Grisham novels on their shelves, with the intention to borrow either "The Firm" or "The Client". I have watched the movie adaptions of both novels and enjoyed them immensely, so I wanted to figure out whether or not Grisham's novels are able to surprise me even more. Anyway, it turned out the library features all Grisham novels except for "The Firm" and "The Client". Dissatisfied, I randomly picked one of his other works without previously checking via Goodreads how popular the book is and which basic sentiment the average opinions represent, as I would usually have done. Soon afterwards I realized that not only is "The Associate" one of his younger works, but also one of his more criticized ones, and not without good reason. 
 Grisham introduceds an interesting protagonist I was able to sympathize with. Over the course of 300 pages, he establishes an intriguing atmosphere and makes his reader want to know how Kyle will eventually get out of his intricate situation. And then, just as everyone else seems to have criticized, he spends twenty pages on a disappointing climax and lets the story swash along for the rest of the book. All in all, it remains an average story, not necessarily good, but neither frustrating or badly disappointing. I kind of lost interest in the book after 250 pages or so, yet it remained entertaining and provided some interesting thoughts on life as an attorney in the Wall Street. I have never been to New York, don't know much about lawyers and am not too interested in law as a subject of study, so I cannot judge how realistically Grisham has portrayed an attorney's life, but he managed to pull me into a world of power struggles and intrigues in spite of an anticlimatic ending, so it finally deserves a decent three-star rating.