Ford County: Stories

Ford County: Stories - by John Grisham

It’s probably somewhat common for authors to write many books all based in a similar region or area of the country.  It seems like most Stephen King books take place in roughly the same geographical area of Maine, and John Grisham seems to tell the bulk of his tales in the Mississippi – Memphis area. Specifically – Ford County. I’m not sure if this county is real or not, but judging from the fact that many of his books go back and forth between his home state of Mississippi and the nearby metropolis of Memphis, I would guess, if it is real, it’s somewhere in the northern area of the state.

Not that this really matters. There’s about six or so short stories here, and whereas they all take place in “Ford County”, they really could take place in any small town in the U.S.  What is important is the tales themselves. Sadly, I found only a couple to be really good, a few to be average, and a few to be downright awful.  I found many of these stories to be flat out ridiculous.  Take the story about the guy whose wife runs out on him and hooks up with the owner of a casino. No problem. The guy can easily get revenge – he simply reads several books on “how to win at black-jack”, and the next thing you know, he’s bankrupting the casino. That will teach you to steal my wife from me.  Yeah. Right.

Then there’s a story about a young man who is working construction in Memphis. He gets hurt on the job pretty bad, and the locals back home in Mississippi decide they need volunteers to drive up to the big city to donate blood.  Don’t they have blood in Memphis for such a purpose?  Is it really that big a catastrophe?  If so, don’t you need to be tested to make sure you have corresponding blood type? I guess this is irrelevant, and 3 young misfits make the night time drive only to manage to get drunk, chased by the cops, arrested in strip bars, etc.  It seems a bit silly and quite unnecessary.

There’s actually a couple of stories worse than the ones I described. It’s not that the writing is bad. Fortunately, Grisham is a master at capturing and retaining the reader’s attention. He’s just running thin in the Ideas department.  Not all of these stories are “law” related, but a few are.  Maybe he was trying to write about something other than the norm for him? Most of his full-length novels, while mostly good, do seem to get a tad repetitious. This is his only compilation of short stories to date.   He definitely has mastered the craft, and I would welcome such a collection by him again in the future. It’s just that if one judges this book on how likable the stories are, this one falls a bit flat.