The Summons

My husband and I like to listen to books on cd in the car — at least, when we’re going to be traveling for awhile. So this weekend on our way to Philly to celebrate our tenth anniversary (3 months late), we grabbed this book by John Grisham to amuse and entertain. Ray and Forrest Atlee, sons of Judge Reuben Atlee of Mississippi, are working out the details of their father’s will when one of them uncovers a mystery.

It’s evenly paced, not an edge-of-your-seat thriller, but it was great as a distraction from traffic jams. The main conflict is moral, not legal, although you pick up a fair amount of legal knowledge over the course of the story. What struck me most was the cynical view of people. There’s not a single person in the story, anywhere, who doesn’t have some dark secret or obvious hypocrisy in their lives. Being a Christian, I noticed that all the churchgoers in this book have secret vices — mistresses, liquor hidden in the bathroom, gambling addictions. But really it’s everyone who’s untrustworthy, even the basically decent protagonist whose modus operandi is secrecy.

I wonder if Grisham sees the world this way, or if he just creates fictional worlds like this because they make the proper setting for a crime novel.