The Associate

HarperTorch, 2002. Very Good. Daniel Ames, a blue-collar associate at a preppy, white-shoe law firm, gets snookered by a pretty colleague into reviewing thousands of pages of docum ents. The client, a pharmaceutical company, is charged with falsifying test results on a new drug that appears to cause horrendous birth defects. Dani el is sure the company didn't do it, but among all the documents he overloo ks a letter that could destroy his client's defense. The opposing counsel g ets hold of it, and the next thing you know, Daniel's smack in the middle o f a murder as well as the attendant legal fraud and chicanery. Who else, be sides its manufacturer, wants the truth about the drug trials covered up? W hose body, charred almost beyond recognition, was found in the lab along wi th a score of dead test monkeys? And what's the connection between a double kidnapping and murder that happened years ago in Arizona and the headline- grabbing lawyer that's trying to pin the blame on Daniel's client for the d rug's terrible effects?