Books Blog: books.elliottback.com

I just finished reading John Grisham’s The Broker, a fast paced thriller about a man with so many secrets to hide that the CIA wants to use him as bait just to confirm which country wants him dead.

It opens slowly, starting out with some Washington politics as a lame-duck president writes his last pardons before he’s replaced. One of those goes to Joel Backman, a lawyer and lobbyist on the hill who created the political scandal that enabled him to first become president. There are conditions attached to the pardon, though, and Joel is smuggled out of America and into Italy where he is expected to live in a CIA safehouse and learn Italian.

All the while, he is being closely watched by American agents. When the time is right, they plan to leak news of his location simultaneously to all the major world powers to discover who is most interested in the intelligence information that Joel managed to obtain as a broker. The first to kill or capture him will tell the CIA what they need.

Unfortunately, the information about a secret system of satellites and the programs to control them are actually in possession of our mysterious broker. Querying him directly would probably be more efficient. As it is, he escapes the CIA custody, flees to Zurich, recovers his funds, and makes it back into the US to negotiate with the government, software in tow. The foreign nations so bent on killing him generally realize that he’s no longer a good target and back off. The CIA stops messing with him.

And, in typical Grisham style, the book ends happily, reuniting Joel with his slightly younger but very attractive Italian tutor.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, December 20th, 2005 at 6:00 pm and is tagged with lame duck president, political scandal, paced thriller, john grisham, government software, reading john, washington politics, safehouse, target, pardons, lobbyist, zurich, satellites, possession, tutor, cia, lawyer, intelligence, italy. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback.

3 Responses to 'The Broker'

1. 
   leah kelley said:

   on October 2nd, 2006 at 9:02 pm

   i have read the book, The Broker for a reading assignment for my english 3 class. i believe this book is very well writen. i do not read very often on my own time but i would read atlease 6 chapters a night because the book was so thrilling and kept you on your toes. i would recommend this book to anyone who likes thrillers and mystery books. i loved it!

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