The Firm by John Grisham

The young lawyer, Mitch McDeere,  who is straight out of collegeis interviewed by a big law firm. They offer him a lot of money, a company car, a high salary and so on, so the young man from a rather poor background is highly pleased with their offer.

As he was one of the best law students in his year, he was offered a job by several good law firms, but with an income normal for a young man fresh from college. Then eventually this law firm from Chicago makes an offer that seems to good to be true. And that is how it finally turns out to be. Mitch accepts the job in the firm and moves together with his young wife Abby to Chicago. He starts working there and is rather good in his new profession, getting to know the firm better and better. The firm makes clear who they do not like lawyers that drink or get off the right path, they like big families and none of their lawyers should get divorced. Slowly he finds out more and more about the firm and about their clients. The firm only employs white men, no coloured, no women. He finds about one woman who was in the firm some years ago, but she won living in a rather excessive way and that she died very soon. Soon, Mitch realises that there are even quite a lot of dead lawyers in the firm. He gets puzzled and starts snooping around and soon stumbles about strange details. It turns out that the firm makes the young lawyers addicted to them, they lend them money, they have photos of the lawyers, together with their girlfriends, they make the women enjoy an expensive life-style, and, in different ways, give them no chance to survive if they try getting out of the firm. Either the lawyer is financially ruined, socially ruined or simply dies. He has to realise that the firm is corrupt, but soon finds out that it is lot worse - the firm is owned by the mob. After a friend of him, working for the firm is dies, Mitch panics. He knows that by now it is already impossible for him to leave the firm without getting killed. The mob not only launders money all around the world, but also defends almost only Mafiosi. He finds further hints and proofs and is slowly able to get a complete picture of this law-firm. And soon he finds out that his house and car are bugged, that the mob knows everything about his life, that they even know that he knows, so he has to leave his office and run off together with his wife and brother. Although he manages to bring all the evidence to the FBI, he is never seen again. The FBI is able to hit the Mafia community very hard, accusing clients and lawyers and even being able to prove everything very clearly.

Mitch, together with his wife and brother, takes off to a little island, with the firm's money and spends the rest of his life on the beach, sipping cocktails, while in the meantime in Chicago all of the firms lawyers are sent to prison.

In this book, the Mafia is characterised as being extremely powerful and very well-organised. They control the lives of their lawyers and can handle then, as they like. They corrupt them, making them addicted to money, women and power, and so soon they would have to do everything for the mob. Sometimes younger lawyers find out what is going on, but never to the full extent. So they are either blackmailed or have a dramatic accident. Only the senior members, who have proved their good will in working for the mob, get to know the dark side of their firm.

Also in this book the FBI characters are, again described as rather incompetent people, and mostly not very pleasant people. But in the end they turn out to be better then they acted throughout the whole story.