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About a month ago I decided to save some money and pick up a few books from the local Good Will. I highly recommend doing this yourself as there are tons of great used books at places like that and they were only a couple dollars each. I had never read a book by John Grisham but I have seen a few movies based on them and they have all been great. The Reckoning is one of his newest offerings and reached the New York Best Seller list. I am not quite sure why.

John Grisham is known for his suspenseful character-driven tales that oftentimes include courtroom dramatics. His knowledge of the legal system, history and the interplay between personalities allows him to create realistic and immersive stories that are rich in detail. This book is no exception.

The Reckoning revolves around one event and spreads the circumstances around the event over a few hundred pages. The first section of the book describes the seemingly sudden murder of a small-town preacher by the town's most prominent wealthy landowner and farmer Pete Banning. Pete does not try to get away with the crime and is arrested straight away. He is also uninterested in telling anyone why he did it. The entire rest of the book is a circuitous journey toward the truth and it isn't told until the very last chapter. The mystery of the book is skated around and hinted at for the entirety of the novel and, while it is an interesting route, it is ultimately unsatisfying. The suspenseful interlude to the truth is built up for so long that there might have been no ending that would have lived up to it.

The middle section of the book is almost entirely filler as it explores Pete Banning's legendary career in the military during World War 2. This might have been the most exciting part of the book as it explains how Pete was captured by the Japanese, tortured and then how he escapes and becomes a guerilla fighter. This part of the book is action-packed and shows how Pete gained his heroic status in his home town but seems like a long tangent to the main story. The last section of the book explores the aftermath of Pete's trial and how it negatively impacts his family and legacy and then ends with a final diatribe of explanation as to what caused all the domestic turmoil.

The one redeeming quality of the book is John Grisham's exemplary writing. While I found the book to be long-winded at best and needlessly verbose at worst it is amazingly well written and because it promises to finally pay off at some point I kept reading and found its winding path entertaining. Grisham creates such a vivid world and writes in a way that always moves forward which made it easy to keep going even at its most mundane. It is an amazing accomplishment to be able to write in this way and I think that many people enjoy this kind of storytelling more than I do.

If you are looking for relentless suspense, action, adventure, or deep philosophical metaphors this is not a great example but if you are looking for a well crafted and character-driven tale that makes the most out of very little detail or you are a fan of John Grisham maybe you'll like this more than I did.

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