Writing For the Money (2012)

Grisham, John (2002). The Summons. New York: Random House.

A lawyer in Mississippi finds three million dollars in cash in his father’s house after the old man dies. The money is not mentioned in the will, and indeed there is no obvious way the judge could have amassed that much cash. Should the lawyer declare it to the IRS and lose half in taxes, as the law requires, or quietly split it with his no-good, loser, drug-addict brother who would probably use it to overdose, or should he just stuff it into the trunk of his car and keep quiet? Choice number three, obviously. But threatening notes appear, followed by break-ins and fires. Somebody knows about the money and wants it.

That is a pretty good set up, because it’s a nice fantasy everyone has had, finding a hoard of cash, and a good question, what would you do with it, with respect to the law, with respect to family, and especially, what would you do if your life was threatened by having the loot?

But the choices for a novel are more restricted than that. We can’t have the protagonist just buy houses, cars, and airplanes, because that’s not interesting. We can’t have him give half to the IRS, because that just rubs greed the wrong way. We could have him split it with his brother, but, again, that goes against the greed motive, and also, maybe he really does care about his irresponsible brother. But, he has to do something with it. He cannot just drive around the south with the money in the back of his Audi for two hundred pages. What fun is that?

But that’s what happens. The promise of the premise is not fulfilled. If the writing were lyrical and insightful, we might not care that the plot has the dynamism of a slug crossing a garden. But the writing is only pedestrian, and also pretty clearly written by a committee. The plot wanders here and there, as if nobody were in charge of directing it, and the ending is incomplete and arbitrary. There obviously was no overall outline of the plot. It was the old, make it up as you go method.

I got the book on a remainder table and I thought I’d see exactly how he works his magic. Unfortunately, there is no magic, other than the fact of the author’s name. I did make a couple of useful observations. One is that the writing is spare, competent, and kinetic, with few digressions into scenery, costumes, or characters’ interiors. That is the formula that sells, apparently.

Also there were a couple of well-wrought moments of chilling suspense, when the protagonist receives threatening notes that reveal the pursuer’s intimate knowledge of his movements and motives. The idea that someone is watching you that closely is frightening. It might have worked even better if the narrative had been first-person and the main character a little more reflective. This narrator is third-person, close in to the main character, but overall, an inert narrator.

I would have enjoyed a paranoid, fear-soaked cat-and-mouse chase, or maybe some clever turn-the-tables plotting, or even, since it’s Grisham, some tricky legal maneuvers. But there is just nothing going on here. It’s a Grisham novel for the sake of a Grisham novel, and there is no literary or artistic reason for it to exist.

After I finished the book, all I could think was, 'What was the point of the story?'
Any readable book has a story question. This book had two: where the money came from and what he'll do with it.
*spoilers alert*
It was disappointing to find that one answer was nothing dramatic and the other not necessary.
When you pose a story question, the reader expects that the answer will change the protagonist somehow. Or affect their life. In this case, one totally expected a son's opinion about his father to change. This would impact his further view on what to do about the money. But the matter was solved all too quickly in last two chapters. The protagonist loses your respect somewhat in the end, almost begging from his wasted brother. There is obvious planting of false clues to mislead the reader. A change of pov near the end which was totally unnecessary and took us away from the protagonist as well as caused a break in the narrative. A change in Ray's attitude which was totally unexplained - all this made the book an unsatisfactory reading.
One thing which stood out for me was that, in the whole of the book, females had absolutely no position of any importance. Take Ray's colleagues or the lawyers or the people he knows. Women are either assistants or eye candy but overall they are just paper cut figures. So all the important deeds, according to John Grisham, are done by men in the world. This kind of scenario - when the author makes long winded efforts to depict authenticity and make accurate descriptions - strikes you as weird to say the least. At least one women lawyer or professor would have been more natural. But we see females only as secretaries or students lusting after Ray. Well, really!
The narrative is poor and too much detailed. The only thing which kept me reading was the powerful story question. But even that turned out to be tawdry. Save your time, folks. Don't read this book.

I seriously don’t understand the mixed reviews on this book I absolutely loved it, such an interesting flowing read about a mysterious death with many shocks and surprises

This one had been sitting on my shelf for exactly 3 years and 20 days. It was about time I read it.
I now see why everyone loves John Grisham. Man's a genius. Such a great book!

it was? okay?

I have read and enjoyed many John Grisham books - starting from his earliest works - but, last summer I read his “The Exchange” (2024) and thought, “Why did I bother to read it?” Or, more importantly, “Why did Grisham bother to write it?” “The Summons” (2002) affected me similarly. The plot did keep moving - until it stalled about 20 pages from the end of the book. At that point, the ending becomes so obvious that you’re only reading to the end for confirmation that you’ve figured it out, but also hoping for some last-minute crazy plot twist that would leave you surprised and astonished and make the book memorable. Sadly, the crazy plot twist doesn’t happen and I was left thinking, “Uh, okay. Close the cover. The end.”

So I'm at my mom's house drooling over her book collection...Okay, I'm lying. I'm looking over two shelves of either leftover college books in uninteresting subjects or my mother's extension collection of John Grisham books. They're all in hardcover. Let's just say she's a huge fan. I've avoided his books like I avoid anything I see on the bestseller's shelves assuming they are a bunch of crap because they are popular and popularity of most things literary tends to correlate with the number of idiots in the world who recommend books to each other.

Anyway, I'm in town after three years in Japan, bored out of my mind and dying for something to curl up with to weather out some of these nasty midwest thunderstorms. I plucked one off the shelf which happened to be 'The Summons'. Two days later, I just stuffed it back with the other hardcovers thinking, "What the hell did I just read?"

I told my mom I had stolen one of her books and she winced when I told her which one. "Honestly," she said, "That's one of his worst. I don't even believe it was written by him. You should have asked me! It definitely wasn't one of my favorites."

NOW she tells me. That's what I get for my insatiable book hunger. I won't give up on John Grisham, just yet, I suppose. I did like 'A Time To Kill'...but then again, that was Matthew McCaughnahey in his holy-hell-HOT days. There were some other good movies I think I saw based on his books. Mr. Grisham, you deserve another chance.

In this book, you basically get some really vivid character development (which I enjoyed) while some egotistical, pompous, boring blowhard drives around with 3 million in cash shoved in trash bags while he panics and tells random strangers he has it. I wonder if this was one of his early creative writing attempts that he thought he could possibly dress up and publish? It's very amateurish in plot and substance. Anyway, I guess they all can't be three run homers in the bottom of the 9th. I think I'll read some Goodreads reviews and choose another one.

Es un buen libro, cumple con las expectativas. No prentende ser la novela definitiva sobre las relaciones filiales, aunque roza el tema.
Creo que la definición más precisa sería decir que es una novela correcta. Como todas las historias de John Grisham tiene un giro final que "no se veía venir", que le aporta interés y algo de ritmo, pero no más que eso.
En fin, una novela para pasar el rato sin estresarse mucho.

Judge Atlee, a retired Judge in Clanton, Mississippi requested his sons Forrest, the black sheep and Ray the law professor by letter to visit him on Sunday afternoon at 5 pm to discuss the details of his estate.

Ray is right on time. Upon entering the home. Ray finds his father lying on the couch, dead. Looking around the room Ray finds something shocking. Money, all in one hundred dollar denominations in old stationery boxes.

When Forrest arrives an hour later. The money has already been put in black trash bags and shoved into a broom closet. Ray and Forrest look at the Will. All of their fathers assets are to be divided equally.

After the funeral the brother went their separate ways.
Ray did a lot of investigating as to where all the money came from. Dirty money he called it.

Ray was beaning watched and his apartment was broken into twice. Nothing was taken. He was feeling the heat of his knowledge.

A series of bad things happened. An airplane he co-owned with others was set on fire. His father's old home was burned down. His brother disappeared to a rehab center in Montana.
Where did the three million go to?

I loved all the suspense.

A typical John Grisham legal thriller but what i enjoyed the most was the ending which resonated with a very common proverb from my culture and it goes, 'akantanshi takalisha,aka lekesha ekalisha.'

And Grisham continues his downhill slide, unarrested.

Oh for the days of his earlier books, when the plots were intricately woven and I couldn't put the books down! You know what I thought when I read this book (and King of Torts, and The Broker)? I thought, OK, JG, we get it that you're a rich boy now, and now you want to explore your rich-boy interests in your fiction. Single malt whiskey, high-stakes gambling, yachts, piloting small aircraft... whatever. The reader can almost see the author's latest hobby unfold in these three books mentioned. The awfulness culminates here though, in The Broker. How about some plot instead? Half of this book is devoted to the question of "did dad make his money gambling? I don't know, let's investigate the gambling industry in tedious detail, and see!" The fact that the answer turns out to be "no" left me cross-eyed. When you devote this many pages to the subject, sir, the reader expects it to have some bearing on the plot.

Dear Reader, I'd save my time if I were you.

The Summons reads like it is written by the John Grisham I used to enjoy. It certainly was better than The Racketeer which I read earlier this year. The Summons even has a nice twist at the end. I wanted a little more courtroom drama than I received. I would describe this as a suspense novel with some “lawyering” factored in rather than the legal thriller I was hoping for. Four stars happily given.