What Makes John Grisham's Bestselling Novels So Appealing?

Have I been avoiding reading John Grisham novels because I'm snooty, or because they're not literary enough? Or, is there some other reason? Most importantly, what have I been missing by not reading him?

That's the subject of this EWA plus the next few I'll be writing.

I'd like to understand, better than I do, why so many are attracted to reading novels by John Grisham while, by comparison, so few are attracted to reading novels by Elizabeth Strout, James McBride, Amor Towles, Marilynn Ronbinson, and Michael Chabon,just to name a few writers whose novels I've written about and whose work I've openly admired. In the case of Strout, Chabon and Robinson, I will be writing about them in the coming months.

The question is not how John Grisham is able to turn out one bestseller after another when compared to the other writers I meantioned. All of them are best-selling authors, universally admired by book reviewers. Rather, I'd like to understand why Grisham's hovels sell like hotcakes when compared to the other novelists.

This off the web: "According to the American Academy of Achievement, Grisham has written 28 consecutive number-one fiction bestsellers, and his books have sold 300 million copies worldwide. Along with Tom Clancy, and J.K. Rowling, Grisham is one of only three authors who have sold two million copies on a first printing."

By comparison, Amor Towles' The Lincoln Highway, which came out in October 2021 and his previous novel, A Gentleman in Moscow, published in 2019 "have collectively sold 4 million copies and have been translated into more than 30 languages."

In this EWA, let's compare and contrast the first 20 pages of Grisham's Sycamore Row to the first 20 pages of Amor Towles' The Lincoln Highway. What can we tell about the entire books just by looking at their opening pages?

The First 20 pages of Grisham's Sycamore Row.

The first chapter (6 pages) covers the apparent suicide scene of Seth Hubbard, a 70+ year old man who is found hanging from a noose that's been strung up on a Sycamore tree, with a ladder apparently kicked aside as Hubbard did away with himself.

The first chapter is written in the style of a police report—an extremely controlled, purposely non-expressive style of writing. Nothing is described that is not what it is, meaning a rope is a rope; a coiled noose is a coiled noose; a rainstorm is a rainstorm.

There is only one paragraph where the omniscient narrator (Grisham's voice) diverts from his police-report style to ask a series of questions: "Had there been an instant of doubt, of second-guessing? When his feet left the safety of the ladder, but with his hands still free, had Seth instinctively grabbed the rope above his head and fought desperately until he surrendered? No one would ever know, but it looked doubtful. Later evidence would reveal that Seth had been a man on a mission."

Chapter 2 is devoted to describing Jake Brigance awaking at 5:25 a.m., dressing, leaving home and driving to his office in the little town of Clanton, Mississippi. Jake is our star-power vehicle, the attorney-personality who ties all of Grisham's novels together. We're immediately sympathetic to the plight of this small-town Mississippi attorney who works such long hours yet earns so little yet, nevertheless, is so maligned by so many. (His house has been burned to the ground by the KKK, for example.)

We see him leaving his home, but before he leaves, he "tiptoed into Hanna's room, kissed her on the cheek and pulled the sheets up a bit higher." What a nice guy. You like Jake. You have to like the guy. Always on the side of right and justice. Who wouldn't like him?

We follow Jake while he unlocks and enters his law office in downtown Clanton, Mississippi. By then we learn Jake and his wife Carla have seriously considered moving away from Clanton, yet they haven't left.

Chapter 2 ends with this sentence: "At 7:00 a.m., on schedule, he sat behind his desk and took a sip of coffee. He looked at his calendar for the day and admitted to himself that it did not look promising or profitable."

With Chapter 3, we have Jake Brigance going through his morning mail and opening a large envelope from the same fellow, Seth Hubbard, who's suicide scene was described in chapter one. The envelope contains Hubbard's last will and testament. That brings us to the end of page 20.

After the first 20 pages, am I fascinated? Do I want to know what happens next? Yes.

It's an out-and-out mystery, you see, where you open with the crime scene, or, in this case, the suicide scene.

The first 20 pages of The Lincoln Highway.

By comparison, Amor Towles' novel opens quietly with our principal protagonist, Emmett Watson, being driven home by his prison warden, Warden Williams, after having served a non-contested manslaughter sentence in a juvenile penal institution. Never mind how unlikely that might be (A warden driving a newly released prisoner home, even if he is under-age.) We get to sit through the warden's pep-talk to Emmett about having served his time, and "paying his debt to society."

On page 5 Warden Williams delivers Emmett into the hands of a rancher, Mr. Ransome, and, less than a page later, into the hands of a banker, Mr. Obermeyer. We learn Emmett and Billy's father has passed away, and the bank is foreclosing on his farm. This scene takes place in the kitchen of the farm house.  The banker has left the electricity turned on in the house out of consideration to Emmett and Billy, with the understanding that they'll move out in a day or two.

In the rest of the opening 20 pages, we see Emmett walking the house where he grew up, knowing that although he was home now, he'll be leaving home with his brother a few days from now. We're treated to memories of the little town in Kansas where he grew up. We meet a neighbor friend, Sally, Mr. Ransome's wife, who brings tonight's dinner in the form of a casserole. Finally, on page 16, Emmett and Billy are left alone. Billy takes a stack of chocolate chip cookies wrapped in aluminum foil from his backpack; he gives his brother one and takes one for himself; and he pours two glasses of milk.

On page 18, "As Emmett smiled and took a sip of milk, he sized up his brother over the rim of the glass. He was about an inch taller and his hair was shorter…. He was happy to be sitting with him at the old kitchen table. He could tell Billy was happy to be sitting there too."

So far, it's not altogether clear what this novel will become. Then, at the end of page 20 the novel declares itself when Billy returns to his backpack and withdraws an envelope of "important papers" he had found in their now deceased father's metal box. "Billy tipped the envelope over the table and out slid nine postcards.

The last words on page 21: "They're postcards," Billy said. "To you and me. From Mom. Nearly eight years had passed since their mother had tucked the two of them in bed, kissed them goodnight…"

And the first words on page 21 are these: "…and walked out the door—and they hadn't heard a word from her since. No phone calls. No letters."

Here you have a sense, in a novel entitled The Lincoln Highway, that the young men are about to leave on a journey to explore their common past, searching for their long-lost mother. Of course, it's obvious to we readers that their mother may not want to be found.

By the time I write next month's EWA (July), I will have read one of the two novels. By the time I publish my August EWA, I will have read both.

We already know this much: Both novels are exciting mysteries. I'd like to figure out: Is my shying away from Grisham based on my shortcomings or his? I want to confront "popular taste" head on. Am I just being snooty? Or, is there something else—something genuine—that separates the 300-million seller from the 4-million seller? That question sure is something "to wrassle with," as we say in Texas.

Forbidden Desire

James McBride's writing class is now in session.

In the midst of a near riot over the distribution of free cheese in a dank basement in a housing project in South Brooklyn, the author of Deacon King Kong, sketches Potts' second visit to "The Cause." Potts an NYPD Sergeant arrives with a number of underlings and other police to investigate recent murders.

That's the surface story. The hypertext is that Potts, an Irish cop, is intensely drawn to Sister Ghee, a black resident of The Cause, yet there is only so far he can go; he's on official business, after all. Yet McBride makes no attempt to censor Pott's thoughts, and therein lies—at least for us, the readers of this brilliant novel—the sweet fruits of forbidden desire.

"Potts turned his attention to Sister Gee. Even on an early, bleak Saturday in that musty, crowded basement, she looked lovely as an Irish spring morning."

"She smiled thinly. She didn't seem happy to see him. 'Seems like you brought the whole force today,' she said."

Potts tells the other residents to speak to the other policemen while he asks Sister Gee, "'Can I speak to you outside?'"

"She followed Potts up the ramp and outside. When they were in the plaza, he turned to her, placed his hands in his pockets and frowned at the ground. She noticed he was wearing a double-breasted sergeant's jacket. He looked quite sharp, she thought, and also bothered. Finally, he looked at her."

Their dialogue—fast as lightning—reveal two people on the same wavelength:

"I will not say I told you so."

"Good."

"But as you know, there's been an incident."

"I heard."

"All of it?"

"No, just rumors. I don't believe in rumors."

The conversation goes back and forth. At certain points Sister Gee is using Potts to find out what happened at the crime scene, and, at other points, Potts is using Sister Gee to understand the background of what actually happened.

Right after she decides that Sportcoat, the principal protagonist, was having an affair with Sister Bibb, she protects her to Potts, telling him, "Sister Bibb wouldn't hurt a fly…"

Potts says, "It's called evidence. I have to ask."

"Potts stared at her. That smile, he thought, is like a rainbow. He tried to keep his voice even, official."

When we readers become aware that Sister Gee has been skirting the truth, misrepresenting, she thought to her herself, "I'll keep lying, just to fold into that big shoulder and see him smile and tell a joke in that heavy, pretty voice he got, the way he did that first day in church.

She smiled a sad, genuine one this time and felt her heart fall to earth as she said the words that brought light to his heart every time he heard them. "Come on back then. Hurry back, if you wanna…"

Potts forced himself to check his emotions. He was at work. People were dead… The best he could get out of it was standing right in front of him, as gorgeous and kind a woman as he'd ever seen.

"We better go back down lest they think we're out here ordering Chinese." He turned to head down the ramp until she touched his arm, stopping him. [They have a quick little exchange of dialogue about the murder that took place. We readers are hanging on the writer's every word, praying something will happen between the man and the woman. More than a little touch on the arm. As readers, I think it's fair to say, we're a little disappointed when nothing happens.

Then, after the cops have left, maybe it's the recent presence of Potts and his fellow cops that gives Sister Gee new insight into her situation and her neighbors and the human tragedies playing out all around her in the housing projects of South Brooklyn.

"Sister Gee stared at her neighbors as they surrounded her, and at that moment she saw them as she had never seen them before; they were crumbs, thimbles, flecks of sugar powder on a cookie, invisible, sporadic dots on the grid of promise…."

"She looked them over, the friends of her life, staring at her. They saw what she saw, they realized. She read it on their faces. They would never win. The game was fixed. The villains would succeed. The heroes would die. The sight of Beanie's mother howling at her son's coffin would haunt them…"

I'm thinking of the outrage expressed by the relatives of loved ones lost to the domestic terrorist/racist who struck just the Saturday before last at the supermarket in Buffalo, N.Y. To a person all the deceased were victims of a hate-crime, just as Beanie was.

The moment of insight James McBride is describing continues: "…all living the New York dream in the Cause Houses, within the sight of the Statue of Liberty, a gigantic copper reminder that this city was a grinding factory that diced the poor man's dreams worse than any cotton gin or sugar-cane field from the old country. And now heroin was here to make their children slaves again, to a useless white power."

The lesson is over. James McBride has just taught us how to make forbidden desire a part of an official investigation that solves nothing yet leaves us feeling achingly sad.