How About the New John Grisham Thriller?

“Don’t mess with me, man. I’M A LAWYER.” — Hook, 1991

“Any fool can make a rule and any fool will mind it.” — Henry David Thoreau, Journal #14

“And it’s safe to say that our next generation maybe can sleep / With dreams of being a lawyer or doctor / Instead of boy with a chopper that hold the cul de sac hostage.’ — Kendrick Lamar, “m.A.A.d city”

I wonder if John Grisham felt cool in 2018 when, in the track “H.G.T.V. Freestyle”, Pusha T referred to himself as “Rap’s John Grisham / I can paint the picture with words if you listen.” It’s hard to imagine Grisham, the 65-year-old white author of legal thrillers, opening up Spotify and listening to the song through the speakers of his khaki-colored Volvo XC90. It’s hard to imagine the native Mississippian has ever bobbed his noggin to Clipse. Do you think John Grisham has ever felt cool at all? Probably not, except for the likely way in which you automatically feel pretty rad about yourself when your novels get made into movies starring Tommy Lee Jones and you have a net worth of $350 million.

When I was a kid, I wanted to be John Grisham. Living a life as an astronaut or a cop never interested me — heights are not my thing, and the hats police officers wear would leave my double cowlick straight wrecked for the rest of a day after donning it. But nabbing a law degree and penning twisty-turny mystery books about the death penalty and hung juries? It was my only real career dream. Then I took a few fiction classes in college, and figured out professional writing was too lonely a vocation for me to ever seriously consider. And, after a stint in an attorney’s office before grad school, I knew I could never mess with that much paperwork.

John Grisham’s novels were the first real books I ever read. I dabbled in Animorphs and a teenage version of the Left Behind series (which was creatively called Left Behind: The Kids), but as a voracious consumer of words, the thick, twisty plots of JG’s paperbacks on my household bookshelf beckoned me like a deer panteth for the water (I think that’s a song they sing in Left Behind: The Kids). I learned about voir dire and tort reform while most kids were trading Pokemon cards (my parents didn’t let collect Pokemon cards, which I’m making up for now, as my son has at least a hundred and I recently purchased a specific hologram card for him from eBay).

I’ve continued reading Grisham. Right now I’m making my way through The Guardians, a #1 NYT Besteller (like all Grisham books), about a former lawyer-turned-Episcopal priest-turned-attorney for a non-profit that works to overturn innocent prisoners’ convictions. It isn’t a great book. I have a Masters in English, and one of the few actionable bits of authority that certificate allows me is the ability to critique works of fiction, so you can trust me when I say it’s not a masterpiece. It isn’t East of Eden, but it’s probably, like, 3 stars out of 5. But don’t just take my word for it, here’s what Barb had to say:

Ah, yes. Just like an old episode of “Dragnet.” A perfectly relevant and relatable analogy, Barb.

Let’s pause for a brief interlude about Grisham movie adaptations…

The Firm is dope. It’s #YoungTomCruise, and he’s walking in Memphis, and Gene Hackman’s character says the line “Being a tax lawyer’s got nothing to do with the law. It’s a game. We teach the rich how to play it so they can stay rich.” It’s so John Grisham. The Firm is dope.

Pelican is a funny word. I thought “pelican” was a silly name choice for the brief that inspired The Pelican Brief until the New Orleans NBA team renamed itself the Pelicans in 2013. All respect to Zion Williamson. Shoutout to Brandon Ingram. The Pelican Brief is Julia Roberts’ best performance. Erin Brockovich? Get outta here. My Best Friend’s Wedding? I’ve got no time for it or the terrible song they sing at the reception or whatever. Julia Roberts is a law student who unearths a conspiracy involving an oil tycoon assassinating two Supreme Court justices. The Supreme Court is the best branch of government. Long live pelicans. I love you, Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

A Painted House makes Wild Hogs look like There Will Be Blood. It was made-for-TV (on the Hallmark Channel) and has nothing to do with the legal system. The most famous actor in it is Scott Glenn, who is incredible as Kevin Garvey’s dad in The Leftovers, but not so much as a character named “Pappy Chandler” in this flick. John Grisham should stick to the law. Crops are mad boring. Hallmark should stick to cards.

John Grisham had nothing to with Vertical Limit, although I’d wager he owns a lot of North Face apparel. But Chris O’Donnell is in The Chamber, and Chris O’Donnell is the star of Vertical Limit, a piece of art I’ve been petitioning the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art to play on repeat as an exhibit. The Chamber is about a young lawyer trying to get his grandpa off of death row. The death penalty is one of the worst things about America, and any attempt to expose the murder of citizens as a horrendous, inhumane institution is important. Also, Bo Jackson is in The Chamber. Bo knows Grisham.

I don’t know if John Grisham thinks he’s cool, but I know that I don’t feel cool reading John Grisham. I don’t take his books to skim poolside or at my local coffee spot (remember when you could go read a book at a coffee shop?). No, I save my read-through of Cormac McCarthy’s catalog or tomes like Julia Phillips’s excellent Disappearing Earth for public display. Even in my aging dad-bod days, I need to keep some semblance of hipness.

I think what I like about Grisham, along with my nostalgia, is that he’s earnest. I know, I’m a softie…so sue me (you can’t sue me for saying that; Grisham taught me). And his characters are earnest and just complicated enough to be slightly rounded, and they want to do good in the world. Grisham himself wants to do good in the world too, I think. He’s on the board of the Innocence Project and is outspoken about the Confederate flag being removed from the Mississippi state flag. He gave $1.2 million to help the University of Virginia baseball team. Go ‘Hoos.

Most pop music is like candy. As much as I want to eat Haribo gummy rattlesnakes for a meal, it’s not substantial. I will not learn the secret of life from Taylor Swift’s “Cruel Summer” (FYI, I only half-believe this).

If pop music is like candy, then maybe Grisham books are like dinner rolls. They shouldn’t comprise the majority of your diet, but they can, select spots, do some positive nutritional work. They’re comfort food, and comfort shouldn’t be underrated. They should also be thrown. Like what you like. Read what you want every now and then. There’s work to do — tough work to do — but being cool isn’t a requirement of citizenship, and every once in a while you need a dinner roll. With butter. I miss restaurants where you could throw peanuts on the floor.

Let me leave you with an out-of-context quote from a Grisham novel to chew on. It’s from The Racketeer, which, like The Pelican Brief, is about the murder of a judge. The Racketeer also involves a convoluted plot point about a secret stash of gold in Jamaica.

“The Constitution names only three federal offenses: treason, piracy, and counterfeiting. Today there are over forty-five hundred federal crimes, and the number continues to grow as Congress gets tougher on crime and federal prosecutors become more creative in finding ways to apply all their new laws.”

As long as there are laws (and if you ask my mom’s Facebook friends, government overreach is a real problem), John Grisham will write about them.

I’ll keep reading.