Top critical review
3.0 out of 5 starsVery slow moving; the reader doesn't care about raising money
Reviewed in the United States on February 13, 2024
Mitch McDeere returns, working for a world-wide legal team, taking a case to make Libyan dictator Gaddafi pay his 400 million dollar fee to an Italian construction firm that had built Gaddafi’s bridge to nowhere. Once Gaddafi realized it wasn’t going to be used, he refused to pay for it.
Mitch wants to see the actual bridge and so does Giovanna an Italian lawyer who also works for Mitch’s law company; she’s also the daughter of the Italian businessman who loaned Gaddafi the money. They set off to see the bridge with a large security team. Giovanna’s father assures Mitch there’s nothing to fear. Mitch falls behind, lucky for him as a revolutionary movement kidnaps Giovanna and murders the guards, beheading some of them with a chain saw. They want four hundred million for the return of Giovanna.
Most of the book is about how Mitch gathers the money to pay the ransom. Gaddafi send two groups of his best soldiers to save her; they were both embarrassed. Finding the money to pay the ransom isn’t all that interesting. We want to know what’s going on with Giovanna; we get one brief glimpse.
It’s also hard to believe that these backward camel herders would be able to sent a representative (two actually) to deal with Abby, Mitch’s wife in New York City and later Morocco. They send her their terms for Giovanna’s release. There’s also a deadline. We’re also supposed to believe that they’d take less than the hundred million. When I first read that Abby was going to Morocco to deal with the kidnappers, my first thought was whether she’d be kidnapped, too. Would Mitch risk his wife’s life?
The biggest problem I had with the book was that Grisham doesn’t move the story until late in the book, and then it’s too easy. As a reader you know they’re not going to kill Giovanna.