In Which We Look Back At Books We Loved But No Longer Have
Most-slapped person at parties: Pat
Black
Long before I learned how much fun it
is to give lawyers all your money, I put John Grisham's 1990s legal thrillers
in the dock.
During a strange period of my life in
between my final year at school and the end of my first year at university, I
emerged from a long-lasting horror novel phase into what I thought were more
"varied" types of fiction. In truth these were not so much
interesting books as different types of commercial fiction.
On top of genuine curiosity and a
love of books, there was method in my mediocrity. I wanted to know what made
these headline act novels tick, no matter what the genre. I wanted to learn how
to write one.
I took a punt on The Firm (1991), moving
out of my fiction comfort zone, and surprised myself by really enjoying it. Grisham’s
breakthrough blockbuster showcased what I believe are the two greatest assets
of any commercially successful novelist: pace and plot.
Grisham can crank out a tale. He
knows when to take a break from the main action, when to drop in a twist or two,
and - I wouldn't suggest for a minute this was any consequence of his legal
career - he knows how to construct a tangled, twisted storyline peopled by
amoral bastards.
The Firm’s hero has a comic book name: Mitch McDeere. MM is
a hotshot fresh out of grad school, having finished near the top of the class
at Harvard where, like all straight-A swots, he was probably reviled. He has a
beautiful wife, and is going places. He's hired by the firm in the title, and
seduced with the promise of great wealth as well as the odd trip to the
Caribbean for "work".
As a scrubby 17-year-old living in a
squalid tenement with utterly no prospects, I was goggle-eyed at the scenes of
McDeere working out his terms of employment. "And did the man say
Mercedes?"
I must confess to some rumblings of
envy, and perhaps a little belch of greed. Maybe I should have done Law instead
of this Arts and Social Studies nonsense, I thought to myself...
McDeere ties up his big house and
fancy car, but things aren't quite what they seem at the firm. Some of his
colleagues die unusually, and messily. Not quite “fall into an industrial
liquidiser” unusual, but odd enough to raise an eyebrow or two.
McDeere hires a private eye to do
some digging, and finds out that the firm is actually a front for a massive
money-laundering operation for the mafia. McDeere appears to be at the end of a
long trail of dead lawyers once attached to the company.
Things get tastier when McDeere is
contacted by the FBI, who offer him a choice not many of us would relish:
snitch on the mafia and go into witness protection for the rest of your days,
or remain on the inside, knowing that if you don't end up in jail, you're
probably going to have an unfortunate accident.
McDeere takes a gamble, and plays the
two sides off against each other.
Sub-plots are nicely blended in.
There's McDeere's brother, a convict who helps put him onto the private
investigator. McDeere's wife has a hand in stealing documents relating to the
firm's illegal activities, a vital bargaining chip with the FBI. The private
eye's investigations would make a great tale on their own.
There's also an intriguing moment
when McDeere's McD gets the better of his McBrain on a sandy beach one starry
night. This leads to horrible complications when it turns out he's been humping
away on top of a buried honey trap.
These secondary elements were handled
well. It's a lesson in thriller writing; that's how you keep a big novel
moving.
Most of us can only dream of how it
must have felt for Grisham, selling millions of copies, knowing the book was
going to be turned into a movie starring Tom Cruise, knowing he was made for
life, a dazzling career up and running. It can't be too far off how Mitch
McDeere feels when he's handed the keys to the kingdom. Into the great wide
open, indeed.
Great success in publishing is
experienced by very few of us. Sometimes it's down to a mixture of simple luck,
good contacts, Jedi-level editing, a stout advertising budget, pure hype… and
already being famous. But sometimes you have to take your hat off to talent,
and Grisham, in his plotting and execution, has it in the locker.
(Talent, not my hat.)
I returned to Grisham for The Pelican Brief (1992). This
one follows a hotshot law school undergrad, Darby Shaw, who discovers that a
couple of top judges were assassinated as part of a plot to force through oil
drilling on environmentally-protected land, a habitat for endangered pelicans
(ta-da, title!).
As in The Firm, once the conspiracy is discovered, bodies start dropping,
including Shaw's college professor (and lover). This type of "uncovered
corruption" story used to feature journalists as the key guys, and Grisham
acknowledges this by switching the action to a newspaper and introducing the
other main character, a hack with the slightly less impressive superhero name
of Gray Grantham.
There's a siege of sorts at the
newspaper offices as Darby seeks refuge under the protective wing of the free
press, hoping that those silly old concepts, truth and justice, will
prevail.
This one had the same elements which
helped make The Firm a hit, though
its finale fizzled out rather than exploded (arguably this was The Firm's weakest point, too). It's an
engrossing thriller, though.
These are aggressively American
novels. By that, I mean that they have a strong strand of the classic American
Dream in their DNA. Mitch McDeere and Darby Shaw are master-swots. They come
top of the class. They work incredibly hard - McDeere bills 100-hour weeks;
Shaw's life is an avalanche of case files - but their rewards are in sight, and
achievable. It all pays off for them. They succeed on their own merit.
I can see how my younger self was
hoodwinked by this notion that if you work hard enough at anything, success
must follow. This is a strangely American conceit, and of course it's absolute
nonsense, in the same way as the plucky Briton who reaches the top through a
mixture of luck, charm and unstructured natural talent is also total bunk.
Hard work was never a barrier to
success, of course. But we know that many successful people are on the
fast-track to the big time before they've even popped out of the womb, and
sometimes rewards bear little relation to how hard their recipients worked.
These go-getter heroes of western
capitalism with their bizarre fetish for cosmetic dentistry are very rare in UK
stories. We tend to champion less obviously successful characters, and usually
outright underdogs. There's something peculiar in the British national
character that tends to sneer at a clever, neatly-turned-out, well-educated,
ambitious person.
I'm not saying either stance is right
or wrong; every "winner" I've ever met could do with adding a bit of
humility to their game. Equally, crazy, quirky people trying to bumble through
life on the strength of charm, eccentricity, a nebulous concept of
"natural talent" and nebbish self-deprecation could benefit from
lessons in hard graft and assertiveness.
But it's interesting to me when US
and UK cultures clash. We share a language, popular culture and some
traditional and ethnic elements, and there's an almost reflexive tendency to
think the countries are the same, or at least close siblings. They're not.
Once The Pelican Brief had flown, my John Grisham story came to an
abrupt end. I began to pay more attention to the classics, left-field
literature, cult properties and generally more interesting books than what
appeared in the window at WH Smith. But I did have a third bite at Grisham's
tasty torts in The Brethren (2000).
It's not one of Grisham's
better-known books, but is well worth checking out. It follows three judges
who've been jailed for a variety of crimes. They operate a blackmail scam from
their cells, targeting well-known politicians and celebrities who are secretly
gay, and extorting cash out of them for their retirement fund when they are
finally released. One of their targets is involved in a political
assassination, and soon they draw attention from criminals, political
Mephistopheles and Machiavellis and, as before, the FBI.
What struck me was the sheer
nastiness of the plotting, the calculated way the Brethren reeled their marks
in, and how skilfully they manoeuvred out of tight situations, both inside and
outside jail. This is a book without heroes, and no-one to root for - just a
set of bastards trying to work things out to their satisfaction. It's a tight,
and surprisingly tart piece of work.
Case closed. One thing about all
these books of yesteryear: although I could make a great case for the defence
of physical books, one undeniable argument in favour of e-readers is that you
don't have to go far to find the stuff. In just a couple of clicks, you can
have them downloaded. That can’t be a bad thing.
:: Next: The Blind Reviewer feels his
way into one last review... But he might have to tread carefully. He's in a
basement of some kind...
Christ, it's all sticky in here. Is this some kind
of wall? Am I stuck in a well?
I knew I should have told someone I'd been invited
to Thomas Harris' house...
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