John Grisham's "The Broker" is about a once very successful lawyer, until he tries to broker a deal with the Saudis, Russians, Chinese, and Israelis about information he has that will compromise one of the most sophisticated spy satellite systems in the world. The deal doesn't work out, the broker get's caught, and he chooses prison to keep himself safe and alive while still not revealing the secrets he has in his possession somewhere.

Six years later he is pardoned by a President leaving office following a blow-out defeat, on the suggestion of the CIA who also would like to know more about the information the broker possesses. He is shuttled to Italy secretively by them under their less than protective custody, and once again becomes a target of the same foreign government agencies he tried to deal with before.

More than the first half of the book is about the broker and his time in Bologna, Italy. This portion of the book moves along rather slowly, although Grisham does a nice job of telling us about the beautiful and historic city of Bologna. In the last hundred or so pages the story picks up very rapidly, as the broker tries to evade all the agencies who are out there to get him.

The pacing of the story is slow and this one definitely is nowhere near as gripping as the earlier Grisham hits we all had become used to reading and expecting. He can still write a good yarn however, and I will be looking forward to the next unread book of his.