Guest Reviewer Larry W. Chavis: "I Have Nothing to Say.' (The Reckoning by John Grisham)

Well, it has been quite awhile, but Larry W. Chavis is finally back on the blog today with another review. After you read the below regarding the new one by John Grisham, make sure you go check out his review of the 2016 Bouchercon Anthology, Blood on the Bayou. I keep telling Larry he is good at this reviewing thing and ought to keep at it. I hope he does.

"I Have Nothing to Say.'

The Reckoning by John Grisham

New York, Doubleday

October 23, 2018

ISBN: 978-0-385-54415-3 (hardcover)

           978-0-385-54416-0 (ebook)

Reviewed by Larry W. Chavis

At the end of 1945, Pete Banning returned home to the fictional town of Clanton, Mississippi, a bona fide war hero. Captured by the Japanese forces who had forced the American and Filipino defenders, starving and with no hope of reinforcement, to surrender, Pete survived the horrors of the Bataan Death March, and the even-more-unspeakable nightmares of prison camp, to escape and fight for three years as a guerilla in the mountains of Luzon. His family, notified after the fall of the Philippines of his missing-and-presumed-dead status, ecstatically welcomed him home to his ancestral farmlands. A happy ending for everyone.

Until the chilly morning of October 9, 1946, when Pete Banning rose early, walked to his sister's neighboring acreage to have breakfast with her, then calmly drove into Clanton, strode into the Methodist preacher's office, that of his friend, the Reverend Dexter Bell, and shot him three times, twice in the chest and once in the head. Exiting the pastor's study, Banning told the church caretaker to fetch the sheriff, and then drove home to await his arrest. To the sheriff, to his attorney, to his family, Banning made one statement: "I have nothing to say."

The first chapter of John Grisham's latest book sets the stage for what may be his most perplexing novel yet. Not that the underlying motive is so perplexing—in fact, when it is revealed in the final pages, it may be a bit of a let-down—but that Pete Banning is not only willing to commit murder and set loose an avalanche of uncertain and possibly dire consequences on his family, the victim's family, his farm hands and their families, even all of Ford County, without uttering so much as a syllable of the reason for it. Pete's obstinate refusal to speak could, perhaps, be viewed as the actions of principled character acting on his principles. It could also be taken as the narcissistic action of a man who will unleash, at the very least, waves of anxiety and fear on those closest to him with never a care for what he is doing to them. The reader is left to determine which, and it is not so easy to do.

Being a John Grisham book, race and the legal system play prominent roles, the legal system's corruptible and very flawed processes on display, the racial inequities present in 1946 Mississippi differing in degree, if not so much in kind, from those that still plague society. There are two trials in the book, criminal and civil, written with Grisham's ability to highlight a system that, like Diogenes, seeks for truth and honesty. One is left to wonder whether and how often these things are found. The Reckoning is worth reading and is a book to make one think. It is not a book to make one happy.

Larry W. Chavis ©2018