When I was a young reader in high school, struggling to slog through my required literature (looking at you, The Canterbury Tales), my mom encouraged me to pick up a book just for fun. She handed me a tattered paperback of one of John Grisham’s early legal thrillers, and I was instantly hooked. The rest, as they say, is history.
I’ve been a Grisham fan ever since, eagerly anticipating his annual release. As I grew into a book reviewer and blogger, I became even luckier when his publisher began sending me copies of his newest novels. This year’s release, The Widow, sees the seasoned author take on his first true mystery. I breezed through it easily, and I suspect you will too.
When you picture a lawyer, you probably imagine someone sharp in a tailored suit, working from a corner office high above the city—successful, confident, and well-paid. But for every wealthy attorney, there are a dozen small-town lawyers just scraping by. Simon Latch is one of them. His marriage is falling apart, he’s drowning in gambling debt, and his rural Virginia practice barely pays the bills.
So when elderly widow Eleanor Barnett walks into his office asking him to draft a will, Simon barely takes notice. It’s just another routine job. He'll have his secretary type it up, collect the $250 fee, and move on. But when Eleanor confides that she secretly holds a small fortune in Walmart and Coca-Cola stock, Simon’s ears perk up. She has no living relatives, and no one else knows about her wealth. For Simon, it feels like fate has just handed him a way out.
He begins charming the widow, taking her to lunch, and assuring her he’s the right man to help manage her affairs. Once the will is signed—with a generous sum left to him for his “trouble”—all he has to do is wait. But cracks soon start to form in his perfect plan. Eleanor’s fortune comes into question, she’s involved in a shocking car crash, and before long, Simon finds himself on trial for a crime he swears he didn’t commit. Did his greed finally catch up with him, or is an innocent man about to take the fall?
The Widow feels like classic John Grisham in all the right ways. There’s a morally conflicted lawyer at its center, sharp and fast-paced writing, and courtroom drama that keeps you perched on the edge of your seat. And for the first time, Grisham dives headfirst into a full-on murder mystery. This isn’t a whodunnit so much as a did he do it—think Presumed Innocent by Scott Turow.
The story takes its time setting up the central drama, but the slow build pays off. By the time Simon stands trial, we’re as uncertain of his guilt as the jury itself. That uncertainty fuels a tense, compulsive read that doesn’t loosen its grip until the very last page. The Widow is pure entertainment from a master storyteller still at the top of his game.
For more information, visit the author's website, Amazon, and Goodreads.
(2025, 84)
