SOURCE: A review of The Firm, in VLS, No. 97, July-August, 1991, p. 7.

In the following review of The Firm, Kennedy faults Grisham's excessive reliance on popular culture, his weak characterizations, and offensive stereotypes.

Sit back, relax, and pretend it's the 1980s. Of course, you're male and fresh out of Harvard. Law, stunningly handsome, and married to a gal with great legs who dreams of "furniture, and wallpaper, and perhaps a pool before too long. And babies." So when a law firm in Memphis offers you—even before you've passed the bar—a BMW, a house, and 80 grand a year, you don't suspect a thing. Hey, it's an offer you can't refuse, right?

The Firm is a thriller in which author John Grisham concentrates less on his characters than on their conspicuous consumption—BMWs, silk ties, BMWs, solid-cherry desks and leather wing chairs, BMWs, restaurants in "chic [i.e., white...