Why would a World War II hero, a prominent citizen in the small town of Clanton, Mississippi, walk into his church in 1946 and coldly pump three bullets into the popular Methodist minister, a family friend?
That’s the question driving John Grisham’s new novel, “The Reckoning” (Doubleday, 417 pp., ★★★ out of four), for its entire length.
Is murder ever justified?
I couldn’t help thinking of Harper Lee’s great American novel “To Kill a Mockingbird” while reading “The Reckoning” – which, while inevitable, is perhaps unfair.
I don’t think Grisham was trying to write a literary classic for the ages, but “The Reckoning” is deeper, more ambitious that his usual legal thrillers. The pacing is slower, deliberate, at times even sleepy. Stylistically, Grisham’s writing is matter-of-fact, the opposite of dazzling. But have no doubt: He knows how to spin a yarn.
And so “The Reckoning” envelopes itself in Southern tropes of the times: madness (a la Tennessee Williams), segregation, miscegenation, even “Old Sparky” (the notorious portable electric chair). Throw in the Bataan Death March and there’s a little something for most fiction (and history) lovers.
Pete Banning, in his early 40s, is a man of few words. When he deliberately guns down Dexter Bell in his church office, he refuses to explain why. “I have nothing to say” is his refrain to the end. Pete’s guilt is never in doubt.
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