I was bored with the law and had the dream of writing,” John Grisham recalled of his time as a young criminal defence attorney in Mississippi. His debut novel, 1989’s A Time to Kill, was followed by the global bestseller The Firm. After becoming a full-time writer, he became the king of the legal thriller, selling more than 300 million books.
Grisham, who was born in Arkansas on 8 February 1955, has also written sports books, novels for young adults, a short story collection and a non-fiction book about a baseball player wrongly convicted of murder. His latest novel, The Sparring Partner, comes out a week after he appears at the inaugural Santa Fe Literary Festival (20-23 May 2022).
His books have been translated into 40 languages and 10 of his publications, including The Client and The Pelican Brief, have been adapted into films. Here, we pick the 10 best novels from an author who says his goal is always to “satisfy the audience, deliver and entertain”.
10. A Time to Kill (1989)
John Grisham said his first novel, A Time to Kill, about a black father who seeks revenge after white supremacists rape his 10-year daughter, was inspired by an actual court case. It took three years to complete. Grisham, who based the youthful Mississippi lawyer Jake Brigance on himself, described the book as “a very accurate portrayal of racial relations in the Deep South”. Only 5,000 hardback copies were printed and are now highly collectable.
9. The Street Lawyer (1998)
When Grisham was awarded the prestigious Library of Congress Creative Achievement Award for Fiction, the organisers hailed “a true American original”. As a writer, Grisham blends compelling characterisation with the skilful delivery of fresh and thrilling plots. These skills were evident in The Street Lawyer, a novel about a rising star at a giant Washington law firm who risks everything to investigate violations of the rights of the homeless.
8. The Chamber (1994)
In 2021, Grisham said he was most interested in writing about issues of “social justice” and all the things “wrong with our legal and penal systems”. He said that penning The Chamber nearly four decades earlier helped him realise that he “could weave a novel round things such as the death penalty”. The novel, set in Chicago’s top law firm, is a powerful tale of a liberal lawyer who takes on the seemingly impossible case of a former Klansman on death row for a fatal bombing in 1967.
7. The Pelican Brief (1992)
Grisham reportedly wrote the character of New Orleans law student Darby Shaw with Julia Roberts in mind – and she went on to play the part in the film adaptation a year after it was first published. It’s a gripping thriller about a conspiracy to conceal the truth behind the assassination of two Supreme Court justices. In the pacy story, Shaw goes into hiding and has to rely on the help of an ambitious young reporter (played onscreen by Denzel Washington).
6. The Client (1993)
Grisham admitted that he once got “really mad” when a “windbag at a party” told him loudly that he “just wrote screenplays”. Although The Client was made into a blockbuster film (starring Susan Sarandon and Tommy Lee Jones), it’s fair to say that Grisham’s original story, about an 11-year-old boy from Memphis who discovers the secret behind a Mafia murder of a senator, is packed with tension. In addition, the atmospheric descriptions recall the work of Grisham’s literary hero, Mark Twain.
5. The Testament (1999)
Grisham said that his legal background gave him the capacity to handle language and “not be fearful” in his writing. One of his boldest stories is The Testament, a sweeping suspense adventure set in Washington DC and in the isolated Brazilian wetlands. The novel centres on a lawyer’s search for a missionary physician who has inherited an $11 billion (£8.7 billion) fortune. The plot thickens upon the devious machinations of the doctor’s greedy family.
4. The Guardians (2019)
Even in his sixties, Grisham was proving his storytelling skills with The Guardians, a compelling 21st century tale of wrongful conviction and small-town conspiracy, set in Florida. The novel, based on a real case of miscarriage of justice and drawing on Grisham’s own religious upbringing, is about a workaholic attorney-and-Episcopal-priest named Cullen Post, who is what is known as an “innocence lawyer”.
3. The Partner (1997)
In the tautly plotted thriller The Partner, young attorney Patrick Lanigan, from Biloxi, Mississippi, fakes his own death and runs off to Brazil with $90m (£71m) purloined from his company. The novel shows how Grisham excels in his aim of writing “high quality popular fiction”, which is also underpinned by the “authenticity” of someone who really knows about courtroom procedures.
2. The Firm (1991)
Incredibly, for a book that ended up selling seven million copies, Grisham admitted that for six months after finishing The Firm “no publisher wanted to buy it”. Grisham said that during 10 years of legal work his clients were normally “little people fighting big corporations” and he used those memories for the book’s plot. The novel, made into a hit film starring Tom Cruise as Harvard law graduate Mitch McDeere, tells the story of a lawyer who discovers he is working for a firm run by the Chicago mob. The novel propelled Grisham into the global spotlight.
1. The Rainmaker (1995)
The Rainmaker, Grisham’s sixth novel, is a searing indictment of the American legal system. Grisham said that the protagonist, a novice Memphis lawyer called Rudy Baylor who is fighting injustice in his first case, was perhaps his favourite of his own characters. “He got out of the legal profession, found a girl, packed up his car and said, ‘I am out of here.’ That is what I always wanted to do when I was a lawyer. I never wanted to go back to the office,” he’s admitted. Baylor was portrayed by Matt Damon in the acclaimed film adaptation directed by Francis Ford Coppola.
The Independent, as the event’s international media partner, will be providing coverage across each day of the festival as well as during the lead up with exclusive interviews with some of the headline authors. For more on the festival visit our Santa Fe Literary Festival section or visit the festival’s website. To find out more about buying tickets click here.
