JOHN Grisham?s 22nd book, ?The Associate,? (Doubleday, New York, 2008, 384 pages) is not shy about its similarities to 1991?s ?The Firm,? Grisham?s second and arguably most popular novel, boasting a Tom Cruise-bedecked box-office hit.

The protagonist of ?The Associate? is a young lawyer in an immensely powerful law firm, a target of blackmail just as the hero of ?The Firm? was. ?The Firm?s? Mitchell McDeere is a fresh Harvard grad working for the Memphis firm Bendini, Lambert & Locke and is not really worried about the rules. ?The Associate?s? Kyle McAvoy, on the other hand, is also a blackmail victim, but is a Yale grad working for New York-based Scully & Pershing.

There are other differences, but for the most part ?The Associate? tracks a lot like ?The Firm.? McAvoy is still in his last months of law school when a man taking the name Bennie Wright threatens him with a video of an alleged rape from McAvoy?s past. To keep the video from surfacing, McAvoy must join Scully & Pershing and hand over confidential information, documents about a billion-dollar battle between two huge defense contractors over the B-10 HyperSonic Bomber.

?Kyle convinced himself that to survive the next seven years, he must learn to think and act like his adversaries,? Grisham writes. ?There was a way out. Somewhere.? McAvoy decides to go along with Bennie?s plans but also plots an escape. His efforts are fraught with danger as Bennie, and the people he works for, clearly show they mean business. McAvoy is constantly followed, his apartment bugged and, when a character gets in the way of Bennie?s plan, that character is murdered. ?Everybody has secrets, Kyle,? Bennie warns. ?I can ruin anyone.?

Journey

Ever since his phosphorous arrival in the bookshelves, Grisham has been on a bit of a journey. His initial novels, addictively readable if occasionally improbable legal thrillers (?A Time To Kill?) brought best-seller status but grudging reviews. Grisham then consciously tried out other things, including a literary semi-autobiographical novel (the terrific ?A Painted House?), nonfiction (the excellent ?The Innocent Man?) and less successful forays into sports and espionage (the mawkish ?Bleachers? and bizarre ?The Broker,? respectively).

Yet Grisham alternated those projects with his bread-and-butter courtroom novels, though each quite different from ?The Firm? and its siblings. Grisham seemed to be tinkering with his trademark legal thrillers, trying to imbue them with the flair and focus of his side projects, attempting to put some literary meat on the slippery bones of his novels.

He tinkers still. ?The Associate? suffers from many of the good qualities of 2008?s ?The Appeal,? and boasts many of that book?s problems as well. During his experimental phase, Grisham boned up on developing characters to obvious effect. McAvoy is an easy protagonist to like, somewhat insecure, scared of many things, but also determined to solve his problems by outthinking his enemies.

?The Associate? vibrates with impressive detail and an unabashed description of the perks and perils of life in a big law firm, be it in Memphis or New York. There are gorgeous chapters where Grisham is gleefully and irresistibly dishing on the behavior and misbehavior of big-time attorneys, pages magnetic with verisimilitude. He clearly knows his stuff. Similarly, Grisham can propel his novels forward like no other contemporary author.

Propulsive plot

But there is not much of a plot to propel. It takes Grisham a ponderous while to put all his pieces into play and by the time ?The Associate? is ready to take off, the book is literally running out of pages. Then it all suddenly ties together all too well. The book?s conclusion is by far the most anticlimactic and frustrating of all of Grisham?s novels; one could argue it is not really an ending at all. It?s exactly as a friend says to McAvoy: ?That?s your problem. Too much fiction.?

Perhaps the oddest part of ?The Associate? is something ?The Firm? suffered from voluminously. Like McDeere, McAvoy turns into super-lawyer when the occasion calls for it, outflanking his shadowy handlers with ease, only McAvoy starts doing it while still in law school and proceeds to do so seemingly at will. It?s an element that stretches the reader?s credulity constantly.

He is getting better but has not come full circle just yet. It actually feels like Grisham is now rewriting his earlier books into more muscular forms. ?The Appeal? is essentially an improved mash-up of ?Runaway Jury? and ?The King of Torts.? Thus fans of John Grisham?s early potboilers will enjoy this novel because it simulates his first books but spiked with better prose. For good or bad, ?The Associate? truly is ?The Firm? on steroids in every way.

Available in hardcover from National Book Store.