Grisham's New Pitch

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On a side street in the small, leafy university town of Charlottesville, Va., there is an unassuming door with a buzzer next to it marked Oakwood Books. It doesn't look like much--it's next door to a mini-mall--but behind it is an enterprise that earns in the neighborhood of $20 million annually. Its sole asset fits in a comfy chair at a red-leather-covered conference table. The asset is good-natured and at ease with himself. With his smooth Southern accent, listening to him talk is like sniffing bourbon.

The asset's name, of course, is John Grisham, author of relentlessly satisfying legal thrillers. There are best sellers, and there are best sellers, but even among the rarefied club of writers who routinely hit the lists, Grisham is unusual. James Patterson, who goes to No. 1 every time his cat steps on his keyboard, might sell 1 million copies in hardcover. Grisham often tops 2 million. By most measures, Grisham was the most successful novelist of the 1990s, when he sold over 60 million books. For seven straight years, 1994-2000, he had the best-selling novel in the country.

The secrets of Grisham's success are no secret at all. There are two of them: his pacing, which ranges from fast to breakneck, and his Theme--little guy takes on big conspiracy, with the little guy getting the win in the end. But Grisham has been getting restless. There are signs that the Theme is not enough for him. "It's human nature to question whether or not you can do something else," he says. "You do something really well a few times, and you don't want to get stereotyped as just the one kind of writer. You want to explore a little bit."

And he has. In 2001 he assayed a fictionalized memoir about his childhood (A Painted House). Since then, he has written an inspirational holiday novel (Skipping Christmas), a football novel (Bleachers) and a spy thriller (The Broker). He even wrote and produced a movie, the Little League-- themed Mickey (sharp-eyed viewers will spot Grisham as the league commissioner). Now the writer who defines American escapism has strayed even further from the Theme. He has written his first book of nonfiction--a gritty, harrowing true-crime story, The Innocent Man (Doubleday; 360 pages).

It would be difficult to imagine a man who looks less like a writer than John Grisham. A whisker under 6 ft., Grisham, 51, is handsome and trim, a former jock who's still in shape. He wears jeans and has an almost actorly sense of self-possession about him. He talks in measured phrases. He doesn't fidget. If you feel like a Diet Coke, he'll fetch it himself. His charm is Clintonian; in fact, the two are distant cousins.

The Theme is Grisham's own story. He grew up poor in Mississippi, the son of a construction worker. As a child, he picked cotton on his grandparents' farm. As a young man, he became a lawyer and then a member of the Mississippi House of Representatives, but all the while he nursed a secret writing habit. Grisham's first novel, A Time to Kill, had a print run of just 5,000 copies. His second book, The Firm, wasn't looking any more promising until Hollywood offered him $600,000 for the movie rights. After that Grisham's writing habit became very public.