The Broker
John Grisham takes you inside the higher echelons of political power where nobody played the game better than the broker. Once the world’s most powerful man, he is now the most wanted. From Washington D.C. to the backstreets of Italy, he’s on the run and running out of time.
About the Book
#1 NEW YORK TIMES BEST SELLER • In his final hours in the Oval Office, the outgoing President grants a controversial last-minute pardon to Joel Backman, a notorious Washington power broker who has spent the last six years hidden away in a federal prison. What no one knows is that the President issues the pardon only after receiving enormous pressure from the CIA.
It seems Backman, in his power broker heyday, may have obtained secrets that compromise the world’s most sophisticated satellite surveillance system. Backman is quietly smuggled out of the country in a military cargo plane, given a new name, a new identity, and a new home in Italy. Eventually, after he has settled into his new life, the CIA will leak his whereabouts to the Israelis, the Russians, the Chinese, and the Saudis.
Then the CIA will do what it does best: sit back and watch. The question is not whether Backman will survive—there is no chance of that. The question the CIA needs answered is, who will kill him?
Read an Excerpt
Chapter One
In the waning hours of a presidency that was destined to arouse less interest from historians than any since perhaps that of William Henry Harrison (thirty-one days from inauguration to death), Arthur Morgan huddled in the Oval Office with his last remaining friend and pondered his final decisions. At that moment he felt as though he'd botched every decision in the previous four years, and he was not overly confident that he could, somehow, so late in the game, get things right. His friend wasn't so sure either, though, as always, he said little and whatever he did say was what the President wanted to hear.
They were about pardons—desperate pleas from thieves and embezzlers and liars, some still in jail and some who'd never served time but who nonetheless wanted their good names cleared and their beloved rights restored. All claimed to be friends, or friends of friends, or die-hard supporters, though only a few had ever gotten the chance to proclaim their support before that eleventh hour. How sad that after four tumultuous years of leading the free world it would all fizzle into one miserable pile of requests from a bunch of crooks. Which thieves should be...
Praise
“Most and best of all, it’s Grisham living up to his reputation as a great storyteller.”
—Entertainment Weekly
“A fast-paced, fun read with echoes of something deeper. The author’s command of pop fiction delivers crisp, sharp prose.”
—The Boston Globe
“[Grisham] is exceptionally good at what he does. . . . Indeed, right now in this country, nobody does it better.”
—The Washington Post
“Where Grisham leads, millions of readers follow.”
—New York Daily News
Listen to an Audio Sample
You Might Also Like
