John Grisham: Master of the Legal Thriller

John Grisham is an American author which is almost synonymous with the modern legal thriller. He was born John Ray Grisham, Jr. on February 8, 1955 in Jonesboro, Arkansas, to a construction worker and a homemaker. As a child, he wanted to become a professional baseball player but after realizing he didn’t have the right stuff for a pro career, he shifted interest and majored in accounting at Mississippi State University. In 1981, he graduated from the University of Mississippi School of Law and went on to practice criminal law for about a decade. From 1994 to 1990, he served at the House of Representatives in Mississippi.

It was at the DeSoto County courthouse when Grisham was inspired to write his first novel after hearing the harrowing testimony of a twelve-year-old rape victim and contemplating the idea of what would have happened if the girl’s father had murdered her assailants. He squeezed in time before going to the office and during courtroom recesses to work on this novel. After three years, A Time to Kill was finished and was eventually bought by Wynwood Press, who gave it a modest 5,000 copy printing and published it in June 1988.

He began to work on another novel about a hotshot young attorney lured to an apparently perfect law firm that was not what it appeared. The title of the next novel is The Firm, which he sold the film rights to Paramount Pictures for $600,000 and suddenly made him a hot property among publishers. It stayed 47 weeks on The New York Times bestseller list and considered the bestselling novel of 1991.

Since A Time to Kill was first published in 1988, Grisham has written one novel a year. His other books are The Firm, The Pelican Brief, The Client, The Chamber, The Rainmaker, The Runaway Jury, The Partner, The Street Lawyer, The Testament, The Brethren, A Painted House, Skipping Christmas, The Summons, The King of Torts, Bleachers, The Last Juror, The Broker, Playing for Pizza, The Appeal, and The Associate. All of these have become international bestsellers.  Nine of his novels have been adapted into films (The Firm, The Pelican Brief, The Client, A Time to Kill, The Rainmaker, The Chamber, A Painted House, The Runaway Jury, and Skipping Christmas).

Today, Grisham lives with his wife Renee and their two children, Ty and Shea. They split their time between their Victorian home on a farm in Mississippi and a plantation near Charlottesville, VA.

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