Reviewed By: Jeff Kreider - RAM
The Associate
Amazon US PB Amazon US HC Amazon Canada PB Amazon Canada HC
Phillip Margolin
Class/Genre: Mystery Thriller
The Associate by Phillip Margolin, is a young lawyer in a big firm where his contemporaries are all Ivy League graduates. He's a sharp kid from a not so prestigious schooling, but is trying to make up for by working harder. This is what gets him to take an evaluation of "discovery" material for a suite against a pharmaceutical company, which his firm is defending and is being charged with producing a drug that causes birth defects. The material is voluminously overwhelming. At the end of a long day, he is saddled with preparing an evaluation of the material by 8:00 AM the next morning.
During the deposition by the plaintiff's council of an executive of the company, which the associate is in attendance, he presents everyone with a letter from one of the scientists to an attorney that states how his tests show a link to a high birth defect rate in monkeys. This spawns a array of problems, not the least of which are how the plaintiff got privileged documents and why the associate didn't find it. He is fired. But later that same day, his boss calls him to make an arrangement to meet him, it seems that the discovery problem wasn't his fault. He arrives at the meeting and finds the man dead. So now he is also accused of murder.
Philip Margolin is one of those discoveries I was introduced to while waiting for the next Michael Connelly release. After reading Gone, But Not Forgotten (his third) and Heartstone his first, I finally met him up in the Bay Area ("M" is for Mystery). I had just finished his latest, The Undertakers Widow. He said that he always tried to have a surprise ending. Welp, that's what I want and that's what we get this time too. I liked it. It did seem to wonder off into the woods every now and then. Though these diversions were, eventually, tied together, I got a confused a few times. These were long trips and I almost thought I was in the wrong book.
Jeff Kreider - RAM
Reprinted with permission. Do Not repost without permission from the author, Jeff Kreider - RAM
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