Grisham, John 1955-

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GRISHAM, John 1955-

PERSONAL: Born February 8, 1955, in Jonesboro, AR; son of a construction worker and a homemaker; married Renee Jones; children: Ty, Shea (daughter). Education: Mississippi State University, B.S., University of Mississippi, J.D. Religion: Baptist.

ADDRESSES: Home—Charlottesville, VA. Agent—Jay Garon-Brooke Associates, Inc., 101 West 55th St., Suite 5K, New York, NY 10019.

CAREER: Writer and lawyer. Admitted to the Bar of the State of Mississippi, 1981; lawyer in private practice in Southaven, MS, 1981-90. Served in Mississippi House of Representatives, 1984-90.

AWARDS, HONORS: Inducted into Academy of Achievement, 1993.

WRITINGS:

NOVELS

A Time to Kill, Wynwood Press (New York, NY), 1989.

The Firm, Doubleday (New York, NY), 1991.

The Pelican Brief, Doubleday (New York, NY), 1992.

The Client, Doubleday (New York, NY), 1993.

John Grisham (collection), Dell (New York, NY), 1993.

The Chamber, Doubleday (New York, NY), 1994.

The Rainmaker, Doubleday (New York, NY), 1995.

The Runaway Jury, Doubleday (New York, NY), 1996.

The Partner, Doubleday (New York, NY), 1997.

The Street Lawyer, Doubleday (New York, NY), 1998.

The Testament, Doubleday (New York, NY), 1999.

The Brethren, Doubleday (New York, NY), 2000.

A Painted House, Doubleday (New York, NY), 2001.

Skipping Christmas, Doubleday (New York, NY), 2001.

The Summons, Doubleday (New York, NY), 2002.

The King of Torts, Doubleday (New York, NY), 2003.

The Bleachers, Doubleday (New York, NY), 2003.

The Last Juror, Doubleday (New York, NY), 2004.

Also author of screenplays The Gingerbread Man (under pseudonym Al Hayes), and Mickey.

ADAPTATIONS: The Firm was adapted as a film, directed by Sydney Pollack and starring Tom Cruise, Gene Hackman, and Jeanne Tripplehorn, Paramount, 1993; The Pelican Brief was adapted as a film, directed by Alan J. Pakula and starring Julia Roberts and Denzel Washington, 1994; The Client was adapted as a film, directed by Joel Schumacher and starring Susan Sarandon and Tommy Lee Jones, 1994; The Chamber was adapted as a film, directed by James Foley and starring Chris O'Donnell and Gene Hackman, 1996; A Time to Kill was adapted as a film, directed by Schumacher and starring Matthew McConaughey and Sandra Bullock, 1996; The Rainmaker was adapted as a film, directed by Francis Ford Coppola and starring Matt Damon and Claire Danes, 1997; Runaway Jury was adapted as a film, directed by Gary Fleder and starring Hackman and Dustin Hoffman, 2003; Skipping Christmas was adapted as a film, starring Tim Allen and Jamie Lee Curtis, Columbia, 2004.

SIDELIGHTS: The author of seventeen back-to-back bestsellers, many of which have been turned into blockbuster movies, John Grisham can count his revenues and copies sold of his legal thrillers in the hundreds of millions. With his works translated into more than thirty languages, Grisham was one of the major success stories in publishing during the 1990s. As Malcolm Jones noted in Newsweek, Grisham was "the best-selling author" of the decade with his formula of "David and Goliath go to court," and the success of his books has helped to make legal thrillers one of the most popular genres among U.S. readers. Jones further commented, "As part of an elite handful of megaselling authors that includes Stephen King, Danielle Steele, Michael Crichton and Tom Clancy, Grisham has literally taken bookselling to places it's never been before—not just to airport kiosks but to price clubs and . . . online bookselling." Grisham's bestsellerdom even extends to countries with a legal system completely different than that in the United States. "He sells to everyone," Jones continued, "from teens to senior citizens, from lawyers in Biloxi to housewives in Hong Kong."

When Grisham began writing his first novel, he never dreamed he would become one of America's bestselling novelists. Yet the appeal of his legal thrillers such as The Firm, The Pelican Brief, The Client, The Rainmaker, and The Summons, among others, has been so great that initial hardcover print runs number in the hundreds of thousands and the reading public regularly buys millions of copies. The one-time lawyer now enjoys a celebrity status that few writers will ever know. "We think of ourselves as regular people, I swear we do," Grisham was quoted as saying of himself and his family by Keli Pryor in Entertainment Weekly. "But then someone will drive 200 miles and show up on my front porch with books for me to sign. Or an old friend will stop by and want to drink coffee for an hour. It drives me crazy." As he told Jones, "I'm a famous writer in a country where nobody reads."

As a youth, Grisham had no dreams of becoming a writer, although he did like to read. Born in Jonesboro, Arkansas, in 1955, he was the son of a constructionworker father and a homemaker mother. His father traveled extensively in his job, and the Grisham family moved many times. Each time the family took up residence in a new town, Grisham would immediately go to the public library to get a library card. "I was never a bookworm," he maintained in an interview for Bookreporter.com. "I remember reading Dr. Seuss, the 'Hardy Boys,' Emil and the Detectives, Chip Hilton, and lots of Mark Twain and Dickens." Another constant for Grisham was his love of baseball, something he has retained in adulthood. One way he and his brothers gauged the quality of each new hometown was by inspecting its little-league ballpark.

In 1967 the family moved to a permanent home in Southaven, Mississippi, where Grisham enjoyed greater success in high school athletics than he did in English composition, a subject in which he earned a D grade. After graduation, he enrolled at Northwest Junior College in Senatobia, Mississippi, where he remained for a year, playing baseball for the school team. Transferring to Delta State University in Cleveland, Mississippi, he continued with his baseball career until he realized that he was not going to make it to the big leagues. Transferring to Mississippi State University, Grisham studied accounting with the ambition of eventually becoming a tax attorney. By the time he earned his law degree from the University of Mississippi, however, his interest had shifted to criminal law, and he returned to Southaven to establish a practice in that field.

Although his law practice was successful, Grisham grew restless in his new career. He switched to the more lucrative field of civil law and won many cases, but the sense of personal dissatisfaction remained. Hoping to somehow make a difference in the world, he entered politics with the aim of reforming his state's educational system. Running as a Democrat, he won a post in the state legislature; four years later, he was reelected. After a total of seven years in public office, Grisham became convinced that he would never be able to cut through the red tape of government bureaucracy in his effort to improve Mississippi's educational system, and he resigned his post in 1990.

While working in the legislature, Grisham continued to run his law office. His first book, A Time to Kill, was inspired by a scene he saw one day in court when a preadolescent girl testified against her rapist. "I felt everything in those moments," Grisham recalled to Pryor. "Revulsion, total love for that child, hate for that defendant. Everyone in that courtroom wanted a gun to shoot him." Unable to get the story out of his mind, be began to wonder what would happen if the girl's father had killed his daughter's assailant. Grisham disclosed to an interviewer with People, "I became obsessed wondering what it would be like if the girl's father killed that rapist and was put on trial. I had to write it down." Soon he had the core of a book dealing with a black father who shoots the white man who raped his daughter. "I never felt such emotion and human drama in my life," he said in the interview.

Writing his first novel, let alone publishing it, was no easy task for Grisham. "Because I have this problem of starting projects and not completing them, my goal for this book was simply to finish it," he revealed to Publishers Weekly interviewer Michelle Bearden. "Then I started thinking that it would be nice to have a novel sitting on my desk, something I could point to and say, 'Yeah, I wrote that.' But it didn't consume me. I had way too much going on to make it a top priority. If it happened, it happened." Working sixty- to seventy-hour weeks between his law practice and political duties, Grisham rose at five in the morning to write an hour a day on his first novel, thinking of the activity as a hobby rather than a serious effort at publication.

Finishing the manuscript in 1987, Grisham next had to look for an agent. He was turned down by several before finally receiving a positive response from Jay Garon. Agent and author encountered a similarly difficult time trying to find a publisher; 5,000 copies of the book were finally published by Wynwood Press, and Grisham received a check for 15,000 dollars. He purchased 1,000 copies of the book himself, peddling them at garden-club meetings and libraries and giving many of them away to family and friends. Ironically, A Time to Kill is now rated by some commentators as the finest of Grisham's novels. Furthermore, according to Pryor, "Those first editions are now worth 3,900 dollars each," and after being republished, "the novel Grisham . . . couldn't give away has 8.6 million copies in print and has spent eighty weeks on the bestseller lists."

Despite the limited initial success of A Time to Kill, Grisham was not discouraged from trying his hand at another novel. The second time around, he decided to follow guidelines set forth in a Writer's Digest article for plotting a suspense novel. The result was The Firm, the story of a corrupt Memphis-based law firm established by organized crime for purposes of shielding and falsifying crime-family earnings. Recruited to the practice is Mitchell McDeere, a promising Harvard law school graduate who is overwhelmed by the company's apparent extravagance. When his criminal bosses discover that McDeere has been indulging his curiosity, he becomes an instant target of both the firm and the authorities monitoring the firm's activities. When he runs afoul of the ostensible good guys, McDeere finds himself in seemingly endless danger.

Grisham was not as motivated when writing The Firm as he had been when composing A Time to Kill, but with his wife's encouragement he finished the book. Before he even began trying to sell the manuscript, he learned that someone had acquired a bootlegged copy of it and was willing to give him 600,000 dollars to turn it into a movie script. Within two weeks, Doubleday, one of the many publishers that had previously rejected A Time to Kill, offered Grisham a contract.

Upon The Firm's publication, several reviewers argued that Grisham had not attained a high art form, although it was generally conceded that he had put together a compelling thriller. Los Angeles Times Book Review critic Charles Champlin wrote that the "character penetration is not deep, but the accelerating tempo of paranoia-driven events is wonderful." Chicago Tribune Books reviewer Bill Brashler offered similar praise, proclaiming that The Firm reads "like a whirlwind." The novel was listed on the New York Times bestseller list for nearly a year and sold approximately ten times as many copies as its predecessor. By the time the film version was released, there were more than seven million copies of The Firm in print. This amazing success gave Grisham the means he needed to build his dream house, quit his law practice, and devote himself entirely to writing.

In a mere one hundred days, Grisham wrote another legal thriller, The Pelican Brief, which introduces readers to brilliant, beautiful female law student Darby Shaw. When two U.S. Supreme Court justices are murdered, Shaw postulates a theory as to why the crimes were committed. Just telling people about her idea makes her gravely vulnerable to the corrupt law firm responsible for the killings.

In reviewing the book, some critics complained that Grisham follows the premise of The Firm too closely, with John Skow writing in his review for Time that The Pelican Brief "is as close to its predecessor as you can get without running The Firm through the office copier." However, Grisham also received praise for creating another exciting story. Frank J. Prial, writing in the New York Times Book Review, observed that, despite some flaws in The Pelican Brief, Grisham "has an ear for dialogue and is a skillful craftsman." The book enjoyed success comparable to The Firm, selling millions of copies.

In just six months, Grisham put together yet another bestseller titled The Client. This legal thriller focuses on a young boy who, after learning a sinister secret, turns to a motherly lawyer for protection from both the mob and the FBI. Like The Firm and The Pelican Brief, the book drew lukewarm reviews but became a bestseller and a major motion picture. During the spring of 1993, after The Client came out and A Time to Kill was republished, Grisham was in the rare and enviable position of having a book at the top of the hardcover bestseller list and books in the first, second, and third spots on the paperback bestseller list as well.

Grisham acknowledged to an Entertainment Weekly interviewer that his second, third, and fourth books are formula-driven. He described his recipe for a bestseller in the following way: "You throw an innocent person in there and get 'em caught up in a conspiracy and you get 'em out." He also admitted to rushing through the writing of The Pelican Brief and The Client, resulting in "some damage" to the books' quality. Yet he also complained that the critical community treats popular writers harshly. "I've sold too many books to get good reviews anymore," he told Pryor. "There's a lot of jealousy, because [reviewers] think they can write a good novel or a best-seller and get frustrated when they can't. As a group, I've learned to despise them."

With his fifth novel, Grisham departs from his proven formula and proceeds at a more leisurely pace. Not only did he take a full nine months to write The Chamber, a book in which the "good guys" and "bad guys" are not as clearly defined as in his previous efforts, but the book itself, at almost 500 pages, takes time to unravel its story line. The novel is a detailed study of a family's history, an examination of the relationship between lawyer and client, and a description of life on death row. The Chamber is "a curiously rich milieu for a Grisham novel," according to Entertainment Weekly critic Mark Harris, "and it allows the author to do some of his best writing since [A Time to Kill.]" Skow credited Grisham with producing a thought-provoking treatise on the death penalty, and noted in Time that The Chamber "has the pace and characters of a thriller, but little else to suggest that it was written by the glib and cheeky author of Grisham's legal entertainments. . . . Grisham may not change opinions with this sane, civil book, and he may not even be trying to. What he does ask, very plainly, is an important question: Is this what you want?" A reviewer for the London Sunday Times stated that "Grisham may do without poetry, wit and style, and offer only the simplest characterisation. The young liberal lawyer may be colourless and the spooky old prisoner onedimensional; but there is no doubt that this ex-lawyer knows how to tell a story." While The Chamber was less obviously commercial than his previous three books, Grisham had little trouble selling the movie rights for a record fee.

The Rainmaker features a young lawyer, Rudy Baylor, recently graduated from law school, who finds himself desperate for a job when the small firm he had planned to work for is bought out by a large, prestigious Memphis firm that has no use for him. After going to work for Bruiser Stone, a shady lawyer with underworld clients, Baylor finds himself averting an FBI raid on Stone's firm while also trying to pursue a lawsuit brought by a terminally ill leukemia patient against an insurance company that has refused to pay for her treatment. While some reviewers again directed harsh criticism at Grisham for his "pedestrian prose" and "ridiculously implausible" plot—in the words of New York Times critic Michiko Kakutani—others praised the novel. Garry Abrams, for instance, writing in the Los Angeles Times Book Review, commended the author's "complex plotting," noting: "In his loping, plain prose, Grisham handles all his themes with admirable dexterity and clarity."

Grisham also garnered warm critical comments for The Runaway Jury, a novel that details the ability of a few individuals to manipulate a jury in the direction that will bring them the greatest financial reward. Writing in the New York Times, Christopher Lehmann-Haupt remarked that Grisham's "prose continues to be clunky, the dialogue merely adequate and the characters as unsubtle as pushpins." But the critic also felt that "the plot's eventual outcome is far more entertainingly unpredictable" than Grisham's previous novels, and he declared that Grisham "for once . . . is telling a story of genuine significance."

Grisham continued his streak of phenomenally popular novels with The Partner, about a law-firm partner who fakes his own death and absconds with ninety million dollars. Discussing his less-than-virtuous protagonist, Grisham told Mel Gussow of the New York Times, "I wanted to show that with money you can really manipulate the system. You can buy your way out of trouble." Philadelphia Inquirer reviewer Robert Drake called The Partner "a fine book, wholly satisfying, and a superb example of a masterful storyteller's prowess captured at its peak."

With Street Lawyer Grisham once again presents a young lawyer on the fast track who has a life-altering experience. The fast pace and moral stance of the novel attracted a chorus of praise. Reviewing the book in Entertainment Weekly, Tom De Haven noted that "success hasn't spoiled John Grisham. Instead of churning out rote legal thrillers, his court reporting keeps getting better." De Haven further noted that Grisham, while lacking the "literary genius" of John Steinbeck, "does share with him the conscience of a social critic and the soul of a preacher." People reviewer Cynthia Sanz similarly reported that Grisham "has forsaken some of his usual suspense and fireworks in favor of an unabashedly heart-tugging portrait of homelessness." However, Sanz further noted that the author does not sacrifice his "zippy pacing" to do so. Praise not only appeared in the popular press: "In a powerful story," wrote Jacalyn N. Kolk in the Florida Bar Journal, "John Grisham tells it like it is on both sides of the street." Kolk felt that this "entertaining" novel "may stir some of us [lawyers] to pay more attention to the world around us."

The Testament provides another departure from the usual Grisham formula. As a reviewer for Publishers Weekly noted, "Grisham confounds expectations by sweeping readers into adventure in the Brazilian wetlands and, more urgently, into a man's search for spiritual renewal." Grisham has firsthand experience of Brazil, having traveled there often and once even helping to build houses there for the poor. His novel eschews the legal wrangling and courtroom suspense his readers have come to expect. Instead, in this tale he proves he "can spin an adventure yarn every bit as well as he can craft a legal thriller," according to Newsweek reviewer Jones. A reviewer for Publishers Weekly felt that while the storytelling is not "subtle," Grisham's use of the suspense novel format to "explore questions of being and faith puts him squarely in the footsteps of Dickens and Graham Greene." The same reviewer concluded that The Testament is "sincere, exciting, and tinged with wonder." Speaking with Jones, Grisham remarked, "The point I was trying to make . . . was that if you spend your life pursuing money and power, you're going to have a pretty sad life."

Lawyers and judges of a much different ilk populate Grisham's eleventh novel, The Brethren. Noting that Grisham veers away from his usual David-and-Goliath scenario, a reviewer for Publishers Weekly still felt that "all will be captivated by this clever thriller that presents as crisp a cast as he's yet devised, and as grippingly sardonic yet bitingly moral a scenario as he's ever imagined." Writing in Entertainment Weekly, De Haven also commented on the novel's cast of ne'er do wells, noting that "if you can get past [Grisham's] creepy misanthropy, he's written a terrifically entertaining story."

With A Painted House, initially serialized in The Oxford American—a small literary magazine Grisham co-owns—the author does the unpredictable: he presents readers with a book with no lawyers. "It's a highly fictionalized childhood memoir of a month in the life of a seven-year-old kid, who is basically me," Grisham explained to Entertainment Weekly's Benjamin Svetkey. Book contributor Liz Seymour called the novel "genre-busting," and "the unsentimental story of a single harvest season in the Arkansas Delta as seen through the eyes of the seven-year-old son and grandson of cotton farmers." Though the tale may be without lawyers, it is not without conflict and incident, including trouble between the migrant workers young Luke Chandler's family brings in for the cotton harvest and a tornado that threatens to destroy the Chandler livelihood. A reviewer for Publishers Weekly noted that Grisham's "writing has evolved with nearly every book," and though the "mechanics" might still be visible in A Painted House, there are "characters that no reader will forget, prose as clean and strong as any Grisham has yet laid down and a drop-dead evocation of a time and place that mark this novel as a classic slice of Americana."

Some critics differed with these opinions, however. Writing in Booklist, Stephanie Zvirin called into question the merits of Grisham's coming-of-age novel: "The measured, descriptive prose is readable . . . and there are some truly tender moments, but this is surface without substance, simply an inadequate effort in a genre that has exploded with quality over the last several years." As usual with a Grisham novel, however, there was a divergence among critical voices. What Zvirin found "inadequate," Entertainment Weekly contributor Bruce Fretts described as a "gem of an auto-biographical novel." Fretts further commented, "Never let it be said this man doesn't know how to spin a good yarn." In Time, Jess Cagle criticized the book's slow pace but concluded that Grisham's "compassion for his characters is infectious, and the book is finally rewarding—a Sunday sermon from a Friday-night storyteller."

With The Summons, Grisham returns to his lawyer roots, to thrillers, and also to Ford County, Mississippi, which was the setting for A Time to Kill. Reviewing the book in Entertainment Weekly, Svetkey found The Summons "not all that tough to put down," and with "few shocking surprises." Nonetheless, shortly after publication, The Summons topped the list of hardcover best sellers, selling well over 100,000 copies in its first week of publication alone.

Grisham's next three books—The King of Torts, The Bleachers, and The Last Juror—all attained best-seller status despite mixed reviews. Of the first, a reviewer for the Yale Law Journal commented that, while Grisham's approach is "badly hobbled . . . by a cliche-driven plot . . . [and] failure to support his argument with substantive, realistic criticisms," the author's talent for powerful storytelling and a simple thesis "may yet move millions of casual readers to support serious reform of American tort law." Jennifer Reese of Entertainment Weekly was highly critical of The Bleachers, describing the story as "a sloppy gridiron mess, a thin and flimsy meditation on football and the dubious role it can play in the lives of young men." "Never a terrific stylist," Reese continued, "Grisham doesn't show any flair for character here." A Publishers Weekly reviewer called The Bleachers a "slight but likable novel," stating: "Many readers will come away having enjoyed the time spent, but wishing there had been a more sympathetic lead character, more originality, more pages, more story and more depth."

The Last Juror became Grisham's seventeenth book and seventeenth best-seller. Despite its popularity among readers, Rosemary Herbert of the Boston Herald warned: "If you expect to be on the edge of your seat while reading John Grisham's latest, think again. The experience is bound to be more like sitting in a jury box. Occasionally, the presentation you'll witness will be riveting. Then again, you've got to listen to a good deal of background material." The story is set in Canton, Mississippi, in the 1970s, and follows aftermath of the rape and murder of a widow that is witnessed by her two young children. Herbert called Grisham "the consummate legal eagle who knows how to pull heartstrings even when the suspense is not thrill-a-minute." Praising The Last Juror as Grisham's "best book in years," Sean Daly noted in People that the novel quickly bounded to best-seller status.

In little more than a decade, Grisham realized greater success than most writers enjoy in a lifetime. Despite such success, the former lawyer and politician remained realistic about his limitations and maintained that a time might come when he would walk away from writing just as he previously abandoned both law and politics. In his interview with Bearden of Publishers Weekly, he compared writers to athletes and concluded: "There's nothing sadder than a sports figure who continues to play past his prime." However, well into his second decade as a novelist, Grisham seemed far from that point. Book ideas "drop in from all directions," he told Svetkey in Entertainment Weekly. "Some gestate for years and some happen in a split second. They'll rattle around in my head for a while, and I'll catch myself mentally piecing it together. How do I suck the reader in, how do I maintain the narrative tension, how do I build up to some kind of exciting end? . . . Some of those will work, some won't."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

BOOKS

Contemporary Literary Criticism, Volume 84, Gale (Detroit, MI), 1995, pp. 189-201.

PERIODICALS

Asia Africa Intelligence Wire, March 15, 2004, Ruel S. De Vera, review of The Last Juror.

Book, January, 2001, Liz Seymour, "Grisham Gets Serious," pp. 34-36.

Booklist, February 1, 1993, p. 954; September 15, 2000, p. 259; February 1, 2001, Stephanie Zvirin, review of A Painted House, p. 1020.

Boston Herald, March 2, 2004, Rosemary Herbert, review of The Last Juror, p. 40.

Christianity Today, October 3, 1994, p. 14; August 9, 1999, p. 70.

Christian Science Monitor, March 5, 1993, p. 10.

Detroit News, May 25, 1994, p. 3D.

Entertainment Weekly, April 1, 1994, Keli Pryor, interview with Grisham, pp. 15-20; June 3, 1994, Mark Harris, "Southern Discomfort," p. 48; July 15, 1994, p. 54; July 29, 1994, p. 23; February 13, 1998, Tom De Haven, review of The Street Lawyer, pp. 64-65; February 4, 2000, Tom De Haven, "Law of Desire," p 63; February 11, 2000, Benjamin Svetkey, "Making His Case" (interview), pp. 63-64; February 9, 2001, Bruce Fretts, "Above the Law," pp. 68-69; February 15, 2002, Benjamin Svetkey, "Trial and Errors," pp. 60-61; September 12, 2003, Jennifer Reese, review of The Bleachers p. 155.

Florida Bar Journal, June, 1998, Jacalyn N. Kolk, review of The Street Lawyer, p. 115.

Forbes, August 30, 1993, p. 24; January 8, 2001, p. 218.

Globe & Mail (Toronto, Ontario, Canada), March 30, 1991, p. C6.

Kirkus Reviews, February 1, 2001.

Library Journal, August, 2000, p. 179; March 1, 2001, p. 131; September 1, 2001, p. 258; December, 2001, Samantha J. Gust, review of Skipping Christmas, pp. 170-171.

Los Angeles Times, December 25, 2001, p. E4; February 26, 2002, p. E3.

Los Angeles Times Book Review, March 10, 1991, Charles Champlin, "Criminal Pursuits," p. 7; April 5, 1992, p. 6; April 4, 1993, p. 6; May 14, 1995, Garry Abrams, review of The Rainmaker, p. 8.

National Review, April 6, 1998, pp. 51-52.

New Republic, August 2, 1993, p. 32; March 14, 1994, p. 32; August 22, 1994, p. 35.

Newsday, March 7, 1993.

New Statesman, June 9, 1995, p. 35.

Newsweek, February 25, 1991, p. 63; March 16, 1992, p. 72; March 15, 1993, pp. 79-81; December 20, 1993, p. 121; February 19, 1999, Malcolm Jones, "Grisham's Gospel," p. 65.

New York, August 1, 1994, pp. 52-53.

New Yorker, August 1, 1994, p. 16.

New York Times, March 5, 1993, p. C29; July 29, 1994, p. B10; April 19, 1995, Michiko Kakutani, review of The Rainmaker, pp. B1, B9; April 28, 1995, p. C33; May 23, 1996, Christopher Lehmann-Haupt, review of The Runaway Jury, p. C20; March 31, 1997, Mel Gussow, review of The Partner, p. B1; February 4, 2002, p. B1; February 5, 2002, p. B7.

New York Times Book Review, March 24, 1991, p. 37; March 15, 1992, Frank J. Prial, "Too Liberal to Live," p. 9; October 18, 1992, p. 33; March 7, 1993, p. 18; December 23, 2001, p. 17; February 24, 2002, p. 13.

People, April 8, 1991, pp. 36-37; March 16, 1992, pp. 43-44; March 15, 1993, pp. 27-28; June 27, 1994, p. 24; August 1, 1994, p. 16; March 2, 1998, Cynthia Sanz, review of The Street Lawyer, p. 37; February 12, 2001, p. 41; February 18, 2002, p. 41; February 23, 2004, Sean Daly, review of The Last Juror, p. 45.

Philadelphia Inquirer, March 23, 1997, Robert Drake, review of The Partner.

Publishers Weekly, February 22, 1993, Michelle Bearden, "PW Interviews: John Grisham," pp. 70-71; May 30, 1994, p. 37; May 6, 1996, p. 71; February 10, 1997; February 1, 1999, review of The Testament, p. 78; January 10, 2000, p. 18; January 31, 2000, review of The Brethren, p. 84; January 22, 2001, review of A Painted House, p. 302; October 29, 2001, p. 20; November 5, 2001, review of Skipping Christmas, p. 43; February 18, 2002, p. 22; August 18, 2003, review of The Bleachers, p. 56.

Southern Living, August, 1991, p. 58.

Sunday Times (London, England), June 12, 1994, review of The Chamber, p. 1.

Time, March 9, 1992, John Skow, "Legal Eagle," p. 70; March 8, 1993, p. 73; June 20, 1994, John Skow, review of The Chamber, p. 67; August 1, 1994; February 26, 2001, Jess Cagle, review of A Painted House, p. 72.

Tribune Books (Chicago, IL), February 24, 1991, Bill Brashler, review of The Firm, p. 6; September 8, 1991, p. 10; February 23, 1992, p. 4; February 28, 1993, p. 7.

Voice Literary Supplement, July-August, 1991, p. 7.

Wall Street Journal, March 12, 1993, p. A6.

Washington Post, January 29, 2002, p. C3.

Yale Law Journal, June, 2003, review of The King of Torts, p. 2600.