David Zinc reaches a breaking point and flees his downtown law firm in a panic. He ends up at Finley & Figg—a pair of ambulance-chasing, bottom-feeding, ethically-questionable attorneys—just in time to hop on board a lawsuit against a major pharmaceutical company. Grisham delivers a likeable protagonist in Zinc, and fleshes out the supporting cast as needed. Skillful pacing and narrative make this one read more like classic Grisham than any have in a while.  

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A stranger walks into a pastor’s office and confesses to a decade-old murder—a murder that another man is about to face the death penalty for. With the clock ticking toward the execution of an innocent man, will the truth be told in time? Grisham continues to address contemporary issues through his stories, and though he drops some heavy-handed statements concerning the death penalty, racial tension, and even the role of church, the book remains engaging.  

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Grisham returns to Ford County, the site of his first novel A Time To Kill, with seven short stories that chronicle life in rural Alabama. Some of the stories were originally ideas for novels—and come across that way with highly compressed story arcs—while others are briefer glimpses into characters and their ongoing situations. In both cases, Grisham remains a skilled author, reminding us that the legal thriller isn’t the only card up his sleeve. 

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A young graduate becomes blackmailed into spying on his new employer, one of the world’s largest law firms, and getting information on one of their most secretive cases. Haunted by mistakes in his past and faced with the grim prospects of failure in the present, Kyle McAvoy finds himself trying to outsmart his enemies and outlive his predicament. The ending comes abruptly, but does give McAvoy’s story a sense of closure. Another entertaining offering from Grisham.

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An enjoyable book, although it bugs me that several ancillary characters simply disappear from the story. If you can’t spend a page wrapping up a subplot, why waste ten pages setting it up? And while I certainly understand the desire to remain relevant, Grisham crafts his stories as morality plays. I'll leave it up to you to see what that moral is (since it involves key plot points of the book), but it's not very subtle.

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Grisham steps away from his legal-based fiction thrillers to delve into the true story of Ron Williamson, a man who spent 20 years in prison – and was put on death row – for a crime he did not commit. With meticulous detail, Grisham reconstructs the murder of a small-town woman and the way in which the investigation was imbalanced against Williamson. A gripping account of injustice and an eye-opening look at the flaws of our justice system.

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While the storytelling aspect of Grisham's writing remains especially strong, this book has little in common with the legal-based thrillers of years past. Courtrooms and lawyers still abound, but this book seems more of an attempt to blend his older style (The Firm, A Time to Kill) with his newer one (A Painted House, Bleachers), focusing more on a character arcs and interweaving individuals rather than grand legal schemes. The result is accomplished with moderate success.

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