Daniel Stepel (The last Baby Boomer)

John Grisham’s Sycamore Row ain’t a goddamn legal thriller—it’s a slow-boiling Southern stew, thick with racial ghosts, small-town politics, and a dead man who ties his own noose just to write a final “screw you” to his family. It’s not subtle, but subtlety is for cowards. This book has backbone. The plot kicks in with a hangin’. Seth Hubbard, rich, dying of cancer, decides to ditch his kids in his will and hand over 90% of his fortune to his Black housekeeper, Lettie Lang. It smells like trouble and it is. Cue the lawyers. Cue the buzzards. Grisham dusts off Jake Brigance, that do-gooder defense attorney from A Time to Kill. Jake’s still broke, still dragging his briefcase full of ideals through Clanton, Mississippi, hoping to find justice in a town that spits it out like tobacco. He’s hired to defend this new hand-written will. No witnesses. Just ink, nerve, and maybe some ghosts. It’s a courtroom drama, sure, but it’s also a punch in the gut about inheritance, race, and memory. The writing’s clean—too clean sometimes. You can feel Grisham trying to stay polite, stay on the rails. But damn it, the bones of this story have bite. You get the stink of sweat in that courthouse, the dust of history floating through testimony. You feel the fury simmering under old oak trees. Grisham does better when he leans into the ugly parts—the racism, the greed, the mess of the South. Lettie’s family? Half proud, half scared. Hubbard’s kids? Entitled weasels. The lawyers? Sharks in seersucker. But Jake… he’s still got some soul left, even if his house burned down and he’s nursing a grudge the size of Ford County. I liked him more this time around. Maybe he’s tired. Tired people tell the truth more often. But there’s too much bloat. Too much “let’s explain this legal thing to you, dear reader.” I wanted more fire, less footnote. And the twist—yes, there’s a twist—comes late, and it’s heavy, powerful stuff. Should’ve hit earlier. Should’ve been the whole damn book. Still, four stars. Not because it’s perfect, but because it tries to say something that matters. About how money can rot a family. About how justice has a long memory. About how the past doesn’t just haunt—it howls.