My dad has kept up with Grisham though and last year he lent me one of Grisham's newer books The Reckoning and told me it was pretty good. It sat in my reading nook for almost a year before I got to it, but I finally did and here we are.
In the first pages of The Reckoning, set in Clanton, Mississippi in 1946, we are witness to the cold-blooded murder of the small town Methodist minister by war hero and Clanton's favorite son Pete Banning. After carrying out his plan to kill Dexter Bell, Pete's only statement about it—to the sheriff, to his lawyers, to the judge, jury, and even his own family—was: "I have nothing to say."
In the rest of the novel, Grisham takes us back to Pete's time as an escaped POW turned guerrilla fighter in the Pacific Theater during WWII. As we come to truly respect and admire this character, do we ever find out why he did what he did??
This novel strings you along to the very last pages of the book and leaves you suspended in that ethically murky tension of wanting to root for Pete Banning even though he murdered a seemingly beloved husband and father in cold blood. While I don't think The Reckoning quite measures up to Grisham's earlier work, it was a good book and it left me wanting to go back and read all my old favorites.
I would recommend The Reckoning with the caveat that if you've never read John Grisham before, you should start with one of his first books and not this one. Your first impression of him should definitely be with A Time to Kill, The Firm, The Pelican Brief, or The Client. While I was eager to find out the resolution in The Reckoning, it took me about three weeks to get through, whereas with his early books, I vividly remember being unable to put them down for a second.
Have you read any of John Grisham's novels or anything in the legal thriller genre? What's your favorite of his books? My dad has his even newer book The Guardians which is set in a small Florida town and my interest to read that one has been piqued, but I'm not sure when I'll get to it. I haven't actually finished any of the books on my 2020 book list so I should probably get cracking on that. What are you reading right now?
So, I read Grisham for the first time in either college or graduate school, and I think I started with A Time to Kill, which I enjoyed, but could have been shorter. King of Torts was awful to me, too, and I came away feeling like there was no one to root for in that story. I really liked A Painted House, but wasn't completely satisfied with the ending. Runaway Jury was pretty good, but I saw the movie first, and the book was much different/better. The Testament was good, and probably my mom's favorite. Craig Parshall wrote some Christian legal thrillers, and I liked the first one, but it's been a really long time since I read anything in this genre.
ReplyDeleteI don't think I've really explored this genre outside of Grisham and don't particularly care to. I know we briefly talked about this the other day but The Firm is a really great one, and as I mentioned in this post, The Partner is my favorite that I've read of his. But I haven't read anything by him (except The Reckoning, obviously) in YEARS. Like, at least 15 years. I'd like to go back and re-read the ones I own.
DeleteI've got to admit, I'm a Grisham virgin! 😅 I've had The Firm on my to-buy list ever since I read On Writing by Stephen King (he recommends it as the best of Grisham's work), but I've just never come across a copy. It seems to be bizarrely hard to find compared to his later stuff?
ReplyDeleteI've also noticed whenever I'm browsing secondhand shops that none of his early work ever seems to be on the shelf! So odd!
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