The Grisham effect

The narrative may be predictable - yes. It may also be without Greene's sublime talent for rivetingly easy prose. Grisham's "limitations" fall flat, for once, because they just don't have the "ammo" to mine into the wraith of his characters' souls. Yet, it goes without saying that The Testament is, by no means, a debacle. It has it all: avaricious family, rapacious lawyers, et al. It certainly sent a note of caution to Grisham. It literally "urged" him to go back to his terra firma - the legal woods of America, not Brazilian swampland.

Grisham, a sensible man, may have read the writing on the wall, and in print, quickly. But, he thought he could experiment - and, the best part is he got away with it. Successfully. Nobody could blame him for taking such a primary gamble, what with his phenomenal statistical roll-call. What's more, he got on with the act vis-à-vis A Painted House, a tale enthused by his own childhood - a moving saga of one boy's voyage from virtuousness to awareness - and, a success story.

To cull another example. The Brethren was no less Grisham's most daring novel, what with its two diverse sub-plots. While the first focused on three imprisoned ex-judges, upset by their loss of clout and authority, and how they fabricated a convoluted blackmail design to track wealthy, secretive gay men, the second story outlined the emergence of presidential candidate Aaron Lake - a pawn, to all intents and purposes, created by CIA director Teddy Maynard to fulfil his own plans for re-establishing the influence of his careworn organisation. Inference? Whatever the plot, Grisham spells magic, what with, perhaps, 100 million copies of all his books, in print, worldwide.

Or, take, for example, his thirteenth novel, Skipping Christmas. Grisham was at it, again, as he took a searchingly different look at the holiday season. Result: a decent, but funny tale about Christmas Eve. The story revolves around a typical middle-aged couple, Luther and Nora Krank, who, after Thanksgiving, wave their daughter Blair off to Peru to work for the Peace Corps. It is then that they suddenly realise that "for the first time in her young and sheltered life Blair would spend Christmas away from home." Luther, who sees his daughter's absence, as an opportunity, figures, that, "a year earlier, the Krank family had spent US$6,100 on Christmas," and had "precious little to show for it." Hence, he makes an administrative resolve: "We won't do Christmas." So, Luther books a 10-day Caribbean cruise. But, things start to turn nasty. It is at this point that Grisham builds up an entertaining, but increasingly alarming picture of how a close-knit community turns on the Kranks. As the tension mounts, readers are taken on a classy journey - of what makes neighbours good neighbours, especially in the wake of an impromptu Christmas bash.

Skipping Christmas, indeed, was a departure from his legal thrillers. It was adapted into a motion picture. His Bleachers, a semi-autobiographical book - related to high school football - was a successful work, just like The Summons, The King of Torts, The Last Juror, The Broker, The Scyamore Row, The Gray Mountain, The Rogue Lawyer, and The Whistler, among others.

Grisham, who once ran for the state legislature and won a brace of terms, lives in a conventionally built Victorian mansion in an 80-acre farm in Oxford, Mississippi. He has dabbled with a magazine of his own - and, reportedly pumped in US$5 million to nourish it. This is all part of his search for his own spectrum of consciousness. Yet, he is still Grisham, son of a construction worker, who only now has a lot of money - something he had never even seen, or heard, in his childhood. However, critics are not amused. They find glitches in his characters, not his page-turning narrative. They often consider his characters as one-dimensional, unfilled, and without depth. Critics or no critics, Grisham is not perturbed with such observations. He thinks he's the luckiest guy he has himself ever known. He ought to be, because he knows it; so do we.

Analysts estimate Grisham's income, this year, at more than US$85 million. He's a one-man industry - big business. Yet, he doesn't really worry about expectations - a Grisham blockbuster, every spring. Says he: "The only pressure I put on myself is to write the best book I can write..." A devoted family man who's as charming as one of his distant cousins, Bill Clinton, Grisham's success is a classic story.

Grisham's books have been translated into 30 languages. He's also been a successful scriptwriter, with a host of screenplays, and half-a-dozen film adaptations. That's all worth a tug or two for someone whose "hobby" is writing.

At 63, Grisham is one among a select few novelists with a handful of websites dedicated to him. Interestingly, however, Grisham, despite his amazing celebrity status, does not do commercials. He just wants to be a writer - a writer with a mind, and message, of his own. Yet, one thing is certain. He will focus on novels, in the foreseeable future too, at his standard rate of almost one a year - or, so long as he has prospective stories.

To cull his own nugget: "If I didn't have a story, I wouldn't write a book."