Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, April 30, 1993 TAG: 9304300103
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: NANCY PATE KNIGHT-RIDDER/TRIBUNE
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
Before he left, Grisham said he was "looking forward to being somewhere where the attention is not on me. It'll be nice to do something good for somebody else."
Two years after the publication of his second novel, "The Firm," boosted the small-town Mississippi lawyer to fame and fortune, the 38-year-old author is trying hard to maintain a normal life. That means after 10 days in Brazil, Grisham will be spending lots of time in Oxford with his wife Renee and their children, 9-year-old Ty and 7-year-old Shea. He'll coach Ty's Little League team, shave once a week before church on Sundays and write a fifth novel.
"It's been such a roller coaster," Grisham said of a marathon book tour last month to promote the release of his new thriller, "The Client" (Doubleday, $23.50).
If a certain wistful weariness creeps into Grisham's tone, it's understandable. Despite the millions he has made from the sales of his books and their film rights, despite the fact that "The Client" leads the national hardcover best-seller lists and "The Pelican Brief," "The Firm" and "A Time to Kill" are Nos. 1, 2 and 3 on the paperback lists, Grisham, at heart, thinks of himself as a regular guy.
He grew up in Southaven, Miss., a Memphis suburb, and studied accounting at Mississippi State before getting a law degree from Ole Miss in Oxford. He then returned to Southaven and set up a practice as a criminal defense attorney. He was elected as a Democratic state legislator in 1981 and, over the next few years, concentrated on his career and family.
But he also started getting up early in the mornings to write a novel about a sensational murder trial in a small Southern town. It took him three years to write; his agent spent another year trying to sell the manuscript. "A Time to Kill" was finally published in 1989 by a small New York publisher, Wynwood Press, but received little publicity. It promptly sank without a trace only to resurface with the success of "The Firm" and become a paperback best-seller.
"A good many people tell me `A Time to Kill' is their favorite, and in some ways I still think it's my best book," Grisham said. "I didn't have any deadlines, there wasn't any pressure. Writing was just my hobby then."
Even before "A Time to Kill" was sold, Grisham's agent told him to start working on another novel ("that way I wouldn't be calling him every day") and he began a thriller about a young tax lawyer who realizes the prestigious Memphis law firm he works for is owned and operated by the mob.
"It was a naked stab at writing commercial fiction," Grisham said. "I wanted to write something of high quality that also had large appeal."
Paramount bought the film rights to "The Firm" even before Doubleday/Dell won a bidding war to publish the book in hardcover and paperback. The movie, directed by Sydney Pollack and starring Tom Cruise, will be released this summer.
Just before "The Firm" was published in March of 1991, Grisham closed his law practice and moved to Oxford to write full time. The result was March 1992's "The Pelican Brief," about a woman law school student who becomes involved in solving the murders of two Supreme Court justices.
"I wanted to write the most thrilling chase I could," Grisham said. "Remember `Three Days of the Condor'? It was a great chase. I love that stuff, that high you get from not knowing which way to turn, when the wrong turn means disaster."
"The Pelican Brief" also is being turned into a film, due out at Christmas and starring Julia Roberts as the imperiled law student and Denzel Washington as the investigative reporter who helps her.
"They've really beefed up the reporter's part so he's a real leading man," Grisham said. "It's not the way I did it in the book, but when I was reading the first draft of the script, I kept seeing things in there I wish I'd thought of."
And, now of course, there's "The Client," in which an 11-year-old boy is caught between mob heavies and government agents when he learns the last, deadly secret of a lawyer who commits suicide.
Not surprisingly, Hollywood already has snapped up "The Client," and director Joel Shumacher ("Falling Down," "Flatliners," "St. Elmo's Fire") wants to begin shooting in Memphis this summer, with a planned release date of March 1994. Not coincidentally, that's when Grisham's fifth thriller is slated for publication. Of course, he still has to write it.
"I'm about three chapters into something," Grisham said. "I don't know if I'll stick with those chapters or throw them out and start over. The words and ideas for books are coming so fast now that I'm literally losing a lot of sleep."
by CNB