Tilt your head just slightly in practically any bookshop anywhere in the world and you will see the name John Grisham stretching out along the shelves. During the past 20 years the former Memphis lawyer has become a byword for tight, taut thrillers, mostly set within the legal profession. As well as selling more than 250 million copies, roughly half his books have been turned into Hollywood films (The Firm, The Client, The Pelican Brief).
Now, though, he has brought out a law novel with a difference: one for children. The latest in a long line of fictional Grisham heroes is 13-year-old Theodore Boone, who, besides giving his name to the book, also dispenses legal advice to his classmates on everything from rescuing an impounded dog to helping parents stop their house from being repossessed. In between these tasks he uncovers sensational evidence in the murder trial that has rocked the small town where he lives.
Should he pass on this red-hot information to the authorities, despite the mystery witness having begged him not to do so? Or should he keep his mouth shut and let a terrible miscarriage of justice take place? As in any Grisham novel for adults, the way Theodore copes with this dilemma provides the moral spine to the story, while all the twists and turns come from the plot.
Motivation for new books
Grisham concedes that there are good commercial reasons to write for children, not the least of which is to convert them to the Grisham brand early on. But he insists that his main motivation for dropping down a few age groups was to get young people as interested in reading as he was.
"My mum was never too keen on TV, so we children all went to the library and got books out," he recalls. "Right from the start, I loved the works of Mark Twain. Every time I read about Tom Sawyer, I'd go out and do something low-level naughty, just like him.
"So yes, I'm hoping primarily to entertain and interest children but at the same time I'm quietly hoping that the books [a Theodore Boone sequel has already been commissioned] will inform them, in a subtle way, about law."
This is an admission that may come as a surprise to seasoned Grisham watchers, accustomed as they are to his line about the best moment in his legal career being the day he gave it up.
At 13, Grisham's only ambition was to become a professional baseballer. While he never succeeded, he has left a lasting mark on the sport by peppering his books with baseball references and building his own junior ground.
Cove Creek Park sits in the middle of the Virginia countryside, 32 kilometres outside Charlottesville, on what used to be cow pasture but is now six immaculately-mown baseball fields, with matching dugouts and pavilions.
Grisham had to shift a fair-sized mountain of novels to pay for building it. But even though he financed Cove Creek Park's construction and continues to subsidise its running today, there is not a mention of him to be found in the entire place.
"The great thing is that we're starting to get the second generation coming in; people who played as children at Cove Creek are now bringing their children to play, too."
You can tell by his proud beam how much satisfaction this brings. Not that baseball is the only cause to which Grisham contributes. He is a big supporter of the post-Hurricane-Katrina fund Rebuild The Coast, he funds a scholarship for southern writers at Mississippi University, and as a lifelong Democrat and a distant (fifth) cousin of Bill Clinton, he helped Hillary Clinton in her presidential campaign, putting on a big fundraising event for her in Charlottesville.
Learning from corrections
By and large, though, he is as nonchalant about his philanthropic work as he is of his writing achievements, his general stance being that he is delighted but astonished to have done so well.
Dig a bit further, though, and you find that he approaches the job of authorship in consistently businesslike fashion and has not let himself get too grand to be edited. "I know a few big writers who just hand in their manuscript and go: ‘That's it, I'm done'," he says without naming names. "That doesn't mean I enjoy it when my pages come back with underlinings and question marks but I've learnt over the years that if there is a problem with the text, it's usually best to fix it, rather than fight."
Grisham says: "Twenty years on, the books are still fun to write and I've still got lots of stories I want to tell, mainly about social injustice and people chewed up by the system. Every morning I wake at 6am or 6.30am, champing at the bit."
Not something he could have foreseen 40 years ago when, unlike young Theo, all he wanted to be was a professional sportsman. Luckily for thriller readers all over the world, those dreams were snuffed out early, although he still has the odd sporting highlight to remember.
Asked for his best-ever moment, he pauses for a second. "Oh yes," he smiles, a warm glow spreading all over his face. "It was in a high-school football match. I was playing quarterback and I ran 80 metres past some large and extremely terrifying opponents to score a touchdown.
"There wasn't a large crowd there on the day but the cheerleaders sure saw it. And that was enough."
