The Reckoning
John Grisham returns to Clanton, Mississippi in his latest novel. In 1946, a World War II veteran and war hero, Pete Banning, walks into a church, shoots the beloved pastor point blank, and then goes home to wait for his inevitable arrest. He never reveals why he shoots the pastor, not to the sheriff, his sister, his attorneys, nor his children. In fact, he thwarts his attorneys’ efforts to mount his defense. He knows that he will likely be found guilty and get the electric chair, but he remains tight-lipped until the very end, leaving everyone wondering: why?
Although a new John Grisham book is usually something I anticipate, the book is unfortunately not up to the caliber of his previous novels. There is no suspenseful build-up but more of a slow crawl. The plot moves along at a snail’s pace, and the book could have been at least 100 pages shorter. The middle section of the book detailing Pete’s time in the war in the Philippines drags on and is unnecessary to advance the plot.
The main character is frustrating and one-dimensional; the idea that a sane person would kill another person without revealing his reasons, knowing that it would devastate and ruin the lives of his children, just seems preposterous. The strongest sections of the book are the legal elements and the trademark courtroom scenes, at which Grisham is at his best.
A small twist at the end is a minor saving grace, but it is not enough to deliver the book entirely from its extreme tedium. Although I did not enjoy this book, I would nonetheless have no hesitation picking up any future Grisham novels, as he has proven over the past 30 years to be a consummate and skilled writer; this one simply misses the mark.
