Sycamore Row by John Grisham (2013. Doubleday. ISBN 9780385537131)
Jake Brigance, the down-and-out lawyer who defended African American Carl Lee of murder in Grisham’s debut novel, A Time to Kill, is back on center stage in this novel set in Clanton the county seat of Ford County, Mississippi. Race again features prominently in this story, a will contest between the black housekeeper of a wealthy white recluse who hangs himself in the throes of terminal cancer and the dead man’s estranged daughter and son. What starts out as a powerful drama with an evocative setting akin to Grisham’s best literary effort, A Painted House, quickly descends to a level of predictable familiarity all too common in this author’s more recent efforts. There’s not much deception or surprise in the story line and the characters are the usual assortment of crooked defense lawyers, unscrupulous investigators, and dim-witted hangers-on. There’s enough legal intrigue to interest an attorney-turned-judge in pursuing the tale to the finish line but I seriously doubt if readers looking for suspense or legal tom foolery will find the overall read up to par with John Grisham’s best such as A Time to Kill, The Client, or The Firm.
A major barrier to Jake’s success during the trial phase of the plot seems to be his failure to strike a bigoted white juror whose teenage daughter was raped by a gang of black men. Brigance didn’t ask the embittered man poignant questions about race, which, after all, is the main theme of the litigation and the book. The grieving father is left on the jury as a decision maker and a potential problem. Despite the author setting the reader up for fireworks surrounding this juror, there isn’t even smoke, much less fire as the plot winds to its expected conclusion. The minor character of the bigoted juror simply fades away, never becoming a factor in the jury’s deliberations. This disappearing act, along with a deposition scene in Alaska, along with several other pat legal scenes plopped down in the storyline of the novel, simply don’t ring true.
Had the author continued with the literary style and pace of the first three chapters, this book would be among Grisham’s best. For whatever reason, the plot and writing slid back to the safe and secure patterns of past Grisham novels, making the book readable and somewhat interesting but far from memorable. Fortunately, the novel’s ending returns to the tenor and linguistic accomplishment of the story’s opening chapters but this artistic rebirth is simply “too little and too late” to propel the book towards a solid endorsement for folks who aren’t a rabid fan one of the world’s most prolific authors (33 books since A Time to Kill was published in 1989).
Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Time_to_Kill_%28Grisham_novel%29) confirms what I have always suspected: That Grisham drew inspiration for A Time to Kill from Harper Lee’s great literary and legal classic, To Kill a Mockingbird. Grisham obviously tutored himself in the writing process by reading great novels back when he first began his literary career and it showed. Maybe it’s time for John to take a deep breath, read some good books, and attempt to find the old magic.
This isn’t a terrible read but it was, given the greatness of some of this attorney-turned-author’s past work, a bit of a disappointment.
3 and 1/2 stars out of 5.
