Jackson Jambalaya

John Grisham’s latest offering is not the legal thriller his fans have come to expect – the usual rollercoaster ride through the judicial system driven by corporations, the Mob, scheming politicians, and the like, it’s a more meandering and introspective mystery about one of the Seven Deadly Sins – greed.

In “The Widow” (Doubleday, $32, 416 pages), Grisham introduces small-town Virginia attorney Simon Latch. Latch is not an up-and-coming mega-firm lawyer like “The Firm’s” Mitch McDeere, or a small-town idealist like “A Time to Kill’s” Jake Brigance, or “The Rainmaker’s” young, brave, unlikely hero Rudy Baylor.

Latch is a lawyer struggling in every phase of his life – his practice, his marriage, his children, his finances, his confidence, and his uncertainties about his ability to keep all those plates spinning. There are secret gambling debts.

Latch’s legal domain harbors no trips to the Cayman Islands to investigate mysterious wire transfers, large insurance companies with nefarious intent, or the riveting pace of most of Grisham’s prior novels.

This protagonist is a bottom rung attorney who does $250 wills, land titles, and other relatively plebeian legal tasks that don’t generate lucrative fees. Latch, mired in failures, the consequences of his own shortcomings, and the inertia of his surroundings, finds solace in the dream of a big score that will solve his woes. Enter Eleanor “Netty” Barnett, a local widow seeking Latch’s help in drawing up a new will. She fears that her existing will, prepared by another local attorney whom Latch considers a rival, Wally Thackerman, is a scheme to gain control of her money. Netty’s story tumbles out, and Simon Latch is seized by the feeling that, in the form of Netty’s apparently substantial fortune from her dead husband (millions in blue chip stocks), he may see his own financial salvation.

Latch promises Netty relief from the perceived threats from her previous will, but at the same instant, he is scheming and planning his own skimming of the widow’s fortune. For her part, Netty is no one’s fool. She wants to disinherit a pair of stepsons.

Against that backdrop, Netty is injured in an automobile accident and dies in the hospital with an apparent cause of death as natural causes following an injury. But suspicions soon question whether the wreck that eventually killed Netty actually was an accident.

The ensuing investigation sees a growing heap of circumstantial evidence pointing directly toward Simon Latch, who must either quickly solve the mystery of Netty’s death or face a long stretch in prison for a crime he did not commit.

Grisham’s record since his days as a Mississippi legislator and small-town lawyer in DeSoto County is amazing. Grisham is the author of more than 50 consecutive #1 bestsellers, translated into nearly 50 languages. But Grisham is at his best when he steps outside his regular lanes in producing fast-paced legal thrillers, a genre in which he is the undisputed expert. I love Grisham’s so-called “small” books and his non-fiction works. “Calico Joe” (baseball) is my personal favorite among those titles, along with “Playing for Pizza” (European League NFL football) and “Bleachers” (high school football).

“The Widow” examines greed slowly, meticulously, and with a sense of introspection born of age and hard experience. Simon Latch – in many ways a lifetime loser – confronts the consequences of greed in which the stakes are his own life, legacy, and freedom.

The fact that Grisham pushes himself to try innovative approaches to storytelling that challenge his readers is an exceptionally good thing. In 2018, the streaming service Netflix teamed up with Grisham for a six-part “docuseries” based on his non-fiction book “The Innocent Man”.

His next book is due out in mid-April and is a work of non-fiction entitled “Shaken: The Rush to Execute an Innocent Man,” based on the actual case of Robert Roberson, a Texas father who has spent years on Death Row for a crime he did not commit. Roberson came within a week of being executed last month in Texas before a Texas appeals court intervened.

Sid Salter is a syndicated columnist. Contact him at sidsalter@sidsalter.com.