Sparring Partners

 

Sparring Partners – by John Grisham

I made it a rule many years ago to never read the inner jacket of a new book – the part that gives the reader an overview of the story.  I found that in too many instances, too much of the plot was divulged in the paragraph or two on said jacket.   If John and Mary are a couple and Mary dies in a car accident in the story, I don’t want to read this tidbit on the jacket if Mary doesn’t die in the story until, say, page 200. I mention this because, in the case of this John Grisham offering, it probably would have helped me enjoy this book slightly better had I taken the time to read the overview of this one and know what to expect.

Here is where I’m going with this - this book isn’t a novel, it’s three novellas.  The jacket would have told me this, and it might have saved me some disappointment.  It’s not that I’m disappointed reading novellas instead of novels, it’s just that Grisham sort of failed in his goal here, and I may have been better prepared.  Two of these three stories end too abruptly and seem “unfinished”. He should have taken both of these stories for the full journey and given them each a total of 400 pages instead of 100.  This is a shame because these two stories are quite good.  Yet, for whatever reason, the stories just basically stop.  I really don’t know what happened here.  Was Grisham under contractual obligation to deliver such a book consisting of three novellas instead of a novel?  I might be able to understand if he messed up with one story, but two?

The one story here that does manage to be complete, is sadly the inferior of the three.  The middle story “Strawberry Moon” is another one of John Grisham’s “Woe is me.  The death penalty is so awful an unfair” story.  He’s written several of these. The idea is a good one, but we’ve simply read too much of them by Grisham since it’s one of his pet protests for such a story to be fresh.  So we read about a brutal murderer’s last couple of hours before he’s executed.  There are a few elements of the story that are a bit unique and refreshing, but for the most part, we suffer through the story along with the convict.

The other two stories, however, had enormous potential.  One story has our old friend Jake Brigance (from Grisham’s first novel “A Time To Kill”) dealing with a “missing attorney”, and the last story is a somewhat fresh legal tale about two spoiled rich brothers who hate each other but basically have to work at dad’s firm even though they’re in their 40s.  Dad, it seems, is in prison, but he’s powerful enough to pull the right strings and keep everyone in line behind him and do his bidding.  I couldn’t help but think of the HBO show “Succession”.  If you’re familiar with that show, think of a family as warped as that one.   You know it’s a warped family when everyone is happy to see the wife of the convict (and mother of the sparring partners) finally die. No love lost for this horrible woman. 

Again, this story had so much potential, yet when we get to the last ten pages of the story, we know we’re about to be disappointed (yet again) because there simply isn’t any way that the story can be wrapped up with only ten pages left.  Alas, we’re right.

As magnificent of a storyteller as John Grisham is, it seems like I tend to be more disappointed by his output as of late.  It’s quite frustrating since many of his books that don’t do it for me seem as though they could have easily been so much better with a tad more care.  This is the case here.  This one is definitely somewhat of a baffler. Let’s hope he does better next time.