The Rapid Decline of John Grisham

***SPOILERS AHEAD***

I can still remember when John Grisham's "The Firm" came out -- it was an instant best-seller and a book I rapidly read through.

Secretly, I suspect, I'm a frustrated would-be lawyer. I don't think I'd really enjoy *being* a lawyer, but I do think I enjoy thinking about being one. Consequently, I find myself drawn to legal thrillers (as Grisham used to write).

"The Firm" was a good book - for 90 percent of the book. I felt he copped-out a little at the end, by making the main antagonist, essentially, the Mafia.

Of course, this wasn't his first book -- he had an earlier one -- but this was the one that put him on the map.

Quickly, Grisham began pumping out books - more quickly, perhaps, that anyone this side of James Patterson.

And, some of them were really pretty good -- "Runaway Jury" is still one of my favorites by him, "The Client" was pretty good, as well.

But, somewhere along the way, Grisham became a fan of the non-ending ending. And, that's disappointing.

He first veered away from being, what I would consider, a legal writer, some time ago. And, for sure, that diminished some of my interest. He stopped focusing on the nitty-gritty and his books became more of a "soap opera starring lawyers" genre. But, at least the endings were fulfilling.

I just recently finished two of his books -- the first, "The Associate" was an utter disappointment. A young lawyer, who had witnessed/been an accomplice to a rape years earlier in college, is 'recruited' by computer hacker thugs to steal information. He finally gets the FBI involved, and a sting is set up, but the cons catch on and flee, never to be heard from again. In other words, a lot of nothing happens.

From the book's Wikipedia page:

Janet Maslin of the New York Times stated, "Mr. Grisham so often writes similar books that the same things must be said of them. The Associate is true to form: it grabs the reader quickly, becomes impossible to put down, stays that way through most of its story, and then escalates into plotting so crazily far-fetched that it defies resolution. Kyle McAvoy is another of the two-dimensional yet terrifically likeable heroes who come to life on Mr. Grisham’s pages only to evaporate later. It’s easy to predict what choice Kyle will make at the end of the novel. It’s impossible to imagine, let alone care, what his life will be like once the improbably wild furor surrounding this one lone law-firm recruit is over."

Somehow, this "non-ending" apparently has become his go-to manuever. Following "The Associate" I immediately read his next novel, "The Appeal." This had a lot more grit to it. Town in Mississippi has been the site of toxic dumping that resulted in a cancer level 15x the national average. Two small-town lawyers win a $40 million lawsuit against the manufacturer, who is then approached by a firm that helps "win/fix" elections. Through less-than-honorable ways, the firm helps a candidate who is more sympathetic to the plight of manufacturer's liability win an election over a previously heavily favored incumbent. The verdict is overruled; the case is dismissed; and the manufacturer goes on, happily ever after.

Now, what this *doesn't* tell you is how much Grisham builds up the protagonists -- the two lawyers that are struggling to keep their firm (and the hopes of 300+ clients awaiting the outcome of this case) -- to be extremely sympathetic. The antagonist -- the CEO of the manufacturing company -- is near-devil-like. Even the patsy candidate is barely likeable. The lines are drawn very tightly.

Of course, at the last minute, the new judge has a personal tragedy in his life that -- we think -- may help him make the *right* decision (and uphold the verdict); although, as I was reading the book, I kept thinking what a convenient (and, as such, ridiculous) premise this was -- the weekend before he's set to make his decision, *something* happens to make him rethink HIS ENTIRE LIFE.

But, it's even worse than that; even faced with this new information, he still makes the wrong decision, and the bad guys ultimately win.

Admittedly, both of these books, on some level, were inspired by real-life information. And, I'm certainly not one to say "the good guy always has to win." But, I'm trying to determine why Grisham seems to think it's more important to keep his audience in suspense; as compared to the characters in his novels.


Easy for me to say, of course; considering the wide array of New York Times bestsellers I've penned already; but a reader can only know what he likes -- and I'm starting to feel like Grisham has been mailing it in for a while.

With the move of Richard North Patterson away from legal thrillers and into more political stories; that effectively leaves Scott Turow as the only true legal-thriller writer I know of (and he only comes out with books every 4-5 years, it seems; although "Presumed Innocent" is still the gold standard of legal mysteries).

Anyone else have any favorites in the legal thriller arena that I should be checking out?