The Broker by John Grisham

Amazon review:
Before he was sent to federal prison for treason (among other things), Joel Backman was an extremely powerful man. Known as "the broker," Backman was a high roller--a lawyer making $10 million a year who could "open any door in Washington." That is, until he tried to broker a deal selling access to the world's most powerful satellite surveillance system to the highest bidder. When caught, Backman accepted prison as the one option that would keep him safe and alive, since the interested parties (the Israelis, the Saudis, the Russians, and the Chinese) were all itching to get their hands on his secrets at any cost. Little does he know that his own government has designs on accessing that information--or at least letting it die with him. Now, six years after his incarceration, the director of the CIA convinces a lame duck president to pardon Backman, and the broker becomes a free man--and an open target.

aP rating: 3.8/5
Genre: Mystery, Thriller
Pages: 368

aP review: John Grisham as a well recognized writer does a grand job in writing a grand thriller and spy novel; The broker. The story does contain several aspects of a highly entertaining action and suspense novels. Only part where I found the novel to be veering away from this theme was when the writer use pages explaining how the main character Joel Backman learned Italian. In other words, this novel will also provide you a good Italian language learning lessons. I liked his writing style of starting from the peak of the story, starting the story with a mysterious story, and continue the story while in the mid parts go back to the past and try to fill in the gap between past and present. Later parts of the novel again picks up on the suspense and running-for-life action which counter-balance the lack of action during Italian lessons. Overall quite good suspense novel by John Grisham.