Bite-Size Legal Trouble and Suspense
John Grisham had some story ideas that he didn’t think could sustain full-length narrative. So he did what he customarily does: whatever he wants to. Was anyone at Doubleday going to argue with that?
Mr. Grisham took seven of his unused plot ideas and turned each of them into a sharp, lean tale free of subplots and padding. At an average length of slightly over 40 pages, these narratives are shorter than novellas but longer than conventional short stories. For a fledgling author, this format would be a tough sell; for Mr. Grisham, it’s a vacation from whatever grueling work goes into the construction of fully rigged best sellers. The change invigorates him in ways that show up on the page.
“Ford County” is Mr. Grisham’s only short-story collection. That doesn’t mean he’s put his novelistic instincts aside. This book begins on a light note and ends with a teary one; in between it’s full of tacit suspense that hinges on the bending, breaking and subversion of Mississippi law. Exactly when and how will a tricky legal issue arise? You needn’t see it coming to know it will be there.In the hive of criminal creativity that is Ford County (the place introduced in Mr. Grisham’s debut novel, “A Time to Kill”) many a citizen seems poised on the brink of trouble. Yet Mr. Grisham often approaches that trouble in wryly humorous fashion, as he does in “Blood Drive,” the book’s opening story. He begins with an emergency: a local named Bailey has been injured in a construction accident in Memphis, and Bailey needs blood donors. Exactly what happened? Nobody’s sure. What work was Bailey doing? Good question. His mother always said he was an assistant foreman, but he turns out to have been a mason’s helper instead.
Read Maslin's full review at NYT.
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