The Whistler

The Whistler – by John Grisham

As I have stated in many of my recent reviews of John Grisham’s work, I have been suffering lately from “Grisham ennui”.   This guy writes a lot of books, and when 90% of them are about the law, and lawyers etc., it’s very easy to feel as you’ve already read much of the new stuff before. I guess “The Whistler” isn’t really an exception, but for some reason, I didn’t feel elements in this book were overtly redundant to his previous offerings.  I guess if I had to pick one of Grisham’s books that was the most similar to this one, it would be “The Pelican Brief”.  Since that one was one of the author’s earliest works and it had been over a quarter of a century since I’ve read it, it might be why I felt this book had more elements that were fresh as opposed to stale.

Our protagonist in this book is a 30-something investigator for the Board on Judicial Conduct named Lacy Stoltz.  I never knew an organization such as this board even existed.  Apparently, those who work for such an institute spend the taxpayer dollars to investigate judges across their particular state who might be in the wrong and are violating the ethics they’re sworn to uphold.  Actually, this is a rather mundane job for the most part, and Lacy and her co-workers manage to barely go about their day-to-day job since the budget for their work is unsurprisingly tight.  Not that this really matters.  Judges for the most part, after all, are mostly good people.

Until Lacy meets The Whistler.

Or someone ‘close’ to the Whistler.  In a remote, clandestine meeting, this individual has a big tip for Lacy.  He has some information about a judge who is much more devious and treacherous than normal.  This judge is apparently into a lot of corruption including things such as people being murdered and sending innocent people to jail.  All of this to ensure a casino is built nearby so the judge can participate in some regular scheduled skimming. Well, this judge is obviously backed by high profile criminals (it’s a casino, after all), so when Lacy starts innocently snooping around, bad things start to happen.  And by bad things I don’t mean prank phone calls or someone letting the air out of her car tires. 

If you wanted to be critical of this story, you could say that there really aren’t that many surprises within the pages.  There are no eye-popping scenes, nor times when you want to exclaim “Whoa! I didn’t see THAT coming!”  No, this story is pretty straight-forward without that many plot twists and/or gotchas.   Had this tale been written by anyone other than John Grisham, this trait might have been a serious strike against the book.  I can imagine where a typical reader might have to stifle a lot of yawns had this story been told by an unproven author.

But this is John Grisham, and the thing you have to remember about John Grisham is that his main strength is telling a strong, engrossing story. He knows just how to keep the plot going and make the story interesting enough to where the reader wants to read “just one more chapter” before turning in for the night.  If you’ve never read a John Grisham, it’s not what he writes about (again, “The Law”), but HOW he writes that makes his books so good.  You’re never bored. Even if the story doesn’t throw you a lot of curveballs.

So for my tastes, as long as John Grisham keeps his stories believable and not ridiculously stupid or disappointing, I come away with the feeling of time well spent.  I simply love to “listen” to this man tell a story.   Many books by other authors that I pick up can make me feel like I’m plodding through them because the story and/or the writing isn’t particularly strong.  John Grisham books are usually the opposite.  I enjoy the journey so much, that I want to keep going and can usually finish an entire novel of his in three or four sittings.

Is this book one of his best?  Well, no.  I think most would argue his best books were his first half-dozen or so. I think this is because, as stated, he tends to repeat himself and we feel as though we’ve read a lot of the new stuff before.  But like all things we’ve “done before”, if we continue to enjoy similar journeys, why shouldn’t we keep going and enjoy the ride?