Resumo de The Broker - John Grisham

The View From Here, by Carl Jones

The Russian Roulette of Reading
an unbelievable incident of chance
Copyright protected © 2005, Carl Jones

My wife is right, I am a complex personality. I don?t look at things like anyone else and besides that, maybe I?m a little paranoid. I have a certain logic but not exactly what would be considered by most to be normal.
Where most people cringe at the thoughts of exchanging an item I am exhilarated by it, I long to do it. I once returned two vacuum cleaners to Wal-Mart for new ones, they were old and worn out. But when I completed my exchange and left the store it was with two new ones and it so happened that Wal*Mart didn?t even carry that particular brand. They were just happy to be rid of me.
Anyway, for my 71st birthday, 30 March, my wife gave me the new John Grisham book, The Broker. My son had recommended it and I enjoy reading Grisham, Gruesome as I call him. It seems that he is the hottest author around right now. The movie industry has a hard time waiting until the new book is off the press to make a movie out of it.
It says in the introduction in the back of the book that Grisham lives in Kentucky and Virginia. With all of the book and movie royalties he probably owns those two states.
The book cost my wife $16.98; well really cost me $16.98, she has a budget for the yard and lumps anything like the book in with the groceries, the groceries come out of my packet.
As I read I began thinking, ?A goodly portion of this $16.98 goes to John Grisham along with all of his other millions.

I followed Joel Backman, the main character in the story, from prison to Italy and his new name of Marco before I decided to take the book back and take advantage of Wal*Mart?s very liberal return policy.
There was no problem at the Service Center, all I needed to do was have a reason for the return and show my receipt and my driver license.
I wanted to be honest, ?I got two of them for my birthday!? I announced.
?You certainly don?t need two of them do you,? she smiled as she prompted my signature on some sort of document and handed me the $16.98 plus tax. I felt better, I felt like I had accomplished something; I felt much better to know that Grisham wasn?t getting my money.
But I wondered what was going to happen to Marco in Italy. I wondered if Luigi would kill him or have him killed.
For the next few shopping sessions while my wife shopped I stood at the book section with an open book reviewing the Broker, well, really reading it but trying to look like I was considering buying it. I picked up where I had left off and after several visits had moved all the way to three pages past Chapter 20.
Marco was getting deeper and deeper into trouble, it would almost have been better for him to have stayed in solitary confinement in prison, there seemed to be no way out. Waiting for the next visit to Wal-Mart and the book section was tedious, I ate furiously trying to accelerate our need to shop. And I remembered my place in the book, ?Three pages past Chapter 20.?

Finally we needed to shop, but when we got to the store all of the books were gone! Either a fantastic sale had removed them or word had gotten out about me pirating the words and sentences. But gone they were for whatever reason.
But, I didn?t panic I went to the Bonner Library on Division and put my name on the long waiting list along with 11 others who were also waiting for the hot book.
The librarian smiled, ?It shouldn?t be very long, we ask the readers to get the books back as soon as they can with these high demand books.?
?How many books do you have??
?Six, so it shouldn?t be long,? she said again.
?Can you imagine what Grisham is making on books just in libraries??

Three weeks later I found a message on my e-mail, ?The Broker is in, you have seven days to pickk it up.?

I noticed when I picked up the book that there were two markers placed between the pages. The first was a white ticket document with my library card number and all of the criteria surrounding me asking for the book and their reserving and contacting me.
The other was a pink bookmark that said something to the effect that this is a high volume book and please return it as soon a possible and that I wouldn?t be allowed to extend.

I opened the book at the pink marker; it was the page three pages past Chapter 20, the same page I had left off at Wal-mart?s three weeks Earlier!!
This couldn?t be happening; there was no way the library would know what page I had been on. I looked around to see if Luigi had me under surveillance.

Now I couldn?t wait to finish the book to see if John Grisham had found out about my shenanigans and had somehow worked me into the plot.

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