Grisham makes disappointing return to courtroom

'The Summons'

by John Grisham

Doubleday, $27.95

John Grisham, the master of legal thrillers, is back with another. With no fewer than 13 astoundingly popular novels under his belt, his new offering, "The Summons," features much of what made him so popular: clever hooks, characters under pressure and endearing Southern settings. Unfortunately, Grisham's new novel (in bookstores today) lacks the most important elements of his past success: suspense, drama and novel plot twists. Without it, what remains is a bland and tasteless "Grisham Lite" not worth the time and effort to read to its plodding and all-too-obvious denouement.

"The Summons" revolves around the death of a prominent, but retired, small-town judge, Reuben Atlee. Atlee, who lives in the family's decaying mansion in Clanton, Miss., is famously crusty and demanding. Dying of cancer, he summons his two sons to discuss his estate. One, Ray Atlee, is a law professor in Virginia who has disappointed his father by teaching rather than returning to Clanton to join his father's law office. Forrest, the other son, is even worse: a drunkard and drug addict who alternates between expensive rehab, embarrassing drunken frolics and failed efforts to remain clean.

Ray reluctantly returns to Clanton as directed. When he arrives, he discovers his father, dead, apparently from either the cancer or an overdose of morphine. Among his papers is a new will, completed by his father moments before his death, leaving his estate to his sons.

But as Ray recovers from the shock of his death, he finds something even more surprising: a little more than $3 million in cash stuffed neatly into 27 boxes on the bookshelf of the silent, dark mansion. The cash - far more than the judge could possibly have earned in his working life - raises provoking questions as to its origins.

Ray struggles with how to respond: If he reports the cash, it would inevitably tarnish his father's reputation and, because of estate taxes, would be subject to crushing taxation. And, if Forrest receives half, he is likely to self-destruct.

Ray decides to keep the horde of cash secret - and safe - while he tries to unravel the mystery of its origin. But Ray is not the only one aware of the cash, a fact that becomes painfully clear as Ray receives a variety of anonymous and threatening notes and letters.

The bulk of the action in the book is devoted to Ray's sometimes frantic efforts to protect the cash, determine its source and do the right thing while sorely tempted by the apparent windfall. Unable to bank the cash - because of the paper trail it would create and questions it would raise - he attempts a variety of sometimes-comical protective efforts.

In a resolution that is almost painfully obvious from early in the novel, Ray's dilemma is ultimately solved for him. But there's no need to worry about staying up late for this one. As the final page turns, you are more likely to be agitated not by the suspense, but at the lack of it.

"The Summons" represents a return to the world of law for Grisham. After 11 best-selling courtroom thrillers, his last two novels ("A Painted House" and "Skipping Christmas") had nothing to do with law or lawyers.

But it is, in many ways, a disappointing return. Grisham's wildly popular earlier novels often featured lawyers, witnesses or jurors caught in a tangle of dangerous crosscurrents, running from death or worse, with the entire morass suddenly clearing with a surprising and plot-twisting finale.

No such luck here. This novel plods along at a slow and wobbly pace to a conclusion so plainly foretold that the only suspense is how long we have to wait to get there.

To his credit, Grisham's writing is more evocative than his past efforts. Although most of the characters are Grisham's standard cardboard cutouts, Ray Atlee, at least, is developed. The careful drawing of the decaying Atlee mansion, too, is worth noting, with its creaking floorboards and dominating oil paintings coming to life as almost a character in its own right.

But this hardly saves the book from itself. Almost everything that might otherwise make the book worth reading is missing: suspense, a spine-tingling surprise ending or even a larger point about law, money or the moral dilemmas we all confront every day. Grisham diehards will no doubt snap it up in record numbers, but most will finish it with the same question: That's it?

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