The Firm, by John Grisham, was a New York Times bestselling novel in 1991 for forty-seven weeks. The book was also made into a Paramount Picture movie two years later. Mitch McDeere is a young, married man finishing law school at Harvard. He became an associate at Bendini, Lambert and Locke, a small firm in Memphis. The firm paid extremely well and bribed him with expensive bonuses. Mitch senses something suspicious when he finds out that there were five accidental deaths in the firm and no one has ever left with an exception of retiring. Several Federal Bureau of Investigation agents contacted Mitch, and they eventually told him that people from his own firm are watching his every move and listening to each word he breathes. They informed him that a mafia in Chicago runs the firm and that the firm is involved in many illegal practices. All five of the dead partners attempted to get out of the firm. The feds now want Mitch to get information so they can stop the criminal activity. He can help the FBI or stay with the firm and later wind up in jail. Either way, his and his wife's lives are endangered.
             An important theme in The Firm is that people can be deceptive and honesty is hard to find. I think that Mitch is trapped in a difficult situation and is very confused. He is an intelligent man but he does not know who to believe, the firm or the feds. When the firm offered him eighty thousand a year to work for them, he should have known that something was not right. While the firm was generous paying off his college loans, offering him a low mortgage home, and giving him a brand new BMW, he wondered where all the money came from. He realizes that he is in a very dangerous circumstance and cannot run away from it and hide. He can only trust his wife, Abby, and needs to make a decision that will alter his life.
             Mitch was thinking this situation through, when he realized that if he cooperated with the FBI, he would be hidi...