With more than forty books to his name, more than 300 million copies sold, and several film adaptations, it’s hard to imagine Grisham was ever a struggling writer. Yet his first novel—written while he was working as a trial lawyer and state legislator in Mississippi—failed famously. A Southern courtroom drama fraught with racial tension, A Time to Kill was published by a small press in 1988 to little acclaim and did not receive mass distribution until its re-release years later. Grisham’s next book, The Firm (1991), about an ambitious young lawyer who starts to investigate his law firm after several partners die mysteriously, was a definite departure from his debut. It wasn’t long before it catapulted to the best-sellers lists and Hollywood came calling. From the very first paragraph of The Firm, it is easy to understand Grisham’s wide appeal:
“. . . there were no women in the firm. That mistake had been made in the mid-seventies when they recruited the number one grad from Harvard, who happened to be a she and a wizard at taxation. She lasted four turbulent years and was killed in a car wreck.”
It says so much with so little, capturing the reader’s interest from the outset. And Grisham continues to ratchet up the tension throughout, forcing the reader to compulsively turn pages until the thunderous crescendo.
Throughout his writing career, Grisham has used his novels to intellectually and morally challenge readers on hot-button issues—for example, the unchecked power of tobacco companies (Runaway Jury, 1996), the lack of regulation of companies dumping toxic waste into water supplies (The Appeal, 2008), the deeply flawed system surrounding capital punishment (The Confession, 2010), and, in his 2017 novel The Rooster Bar, the controversial practices of for-profit law schools.
This story is from the Issue 59 2020 edition of The Strand Magazine.
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This story is from the Issue 59 2020 edition of The Strand Magazine.
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