Grisham’s ‘Reckoning’: Murder, Southern style
Why would a World War II hero, a prominent citizen in the small town of Clanton, Mississippi, walk into his church in 1946 and coldly pump three bullets into the popular Methodist minister, a family friend?
That’s the question driving John Grisham’s new novel, “The Reckoning” (Doubleday, 417 pp., ★★★☆), for its entire length.
Is murder ever justified?
I couldn’t help thinking of Harper Lee’s great American novel “To Kill a Mockingbird” while reading “The Reckoning” – which, while inevitable, is perhaps unfair.
I don’t think Grisham was trying to write a literary classic for the ages, but “The Reckoning” is deeper, more ambitious that his usual legal thrillers. The pacing is slower, deliberate, at times even sleepy. Stylistically, Grisham’s writing is matter-of-fact, the opposite of dazzling. But have no doubt: He knows how to spin a yarn.
And so “The Reckoning” envelopes itself in Southern tropes of the times: madness (a la Tennessee Williams), segregation, miscegenation, even “Old Sparky” (the notorious portable electric chair). Throw in the Bataan Death March and there’s a little something for most fiction (and history) lovers.
Pete Banning, in his early 40s, is a man of few words. When he guns down Dexter Bell in his church office, he refuses to explain why. “I have nothing to say” is his refrain to the end. Pete’s guilt is never in doubt.
Grisham offers one tantalizing clue as Preacher Bell begs for his life: “If it’s about Liza, I can explain. No, Pete!”
Liza is Pete’s wife, mysteriously locked away in the asylum, by Pete. Clearly, this is a family with secrets.
Like Harper Lee, Grisham paints a convincing, layered picture of a Southern town populated by colorful charac- ters where everybody knows everybody. And everybody is baffled by Pete. Was he made crazy by the war?
It takes a while, but Grisham devotes a big chunk of the novel to recounting Lt. Banning’s years in the Philippines. He is MIA, presumed dead, before he comes home, wounded.
Pete’s murder of Dexter Bell unleashes consequences for his family: his whip-smart son, John, studying to be a lawyer; his daughter, Stella, a college kid who wants to be a writer; his sister, Florry, who may know more than she’s telling; and, his locked-away wife. They stand to lose the farm that has been in the family for generations as Bell’s young widow and her weaselly new boyfriend (a lawyer) seek vengeance.
Grisham sometimes tiptoes too lightly around Jim Crow issues; yet there are important black characters (called “Negroes” here) in “The Reckoning,” all sympathetically portrayed. But pay attention: Racism will play a crucial role.
A murder mystery, a courtroom drama, a family saga, a coming-of-age story, a war narrative, a period piece: “The Reckoning” is Grisham’s argument that he’s not just a boilerplate thriller writer. Most jurors will think the counselor has made his case.