The Widow is a John Grisham novel. I think we’ve read and reviewed most of Grisham’s novels and he has generally gotten high praise, if not outright ravings regarding his characters and plots. In this story, an elderly widow, Ms. Eleanor Barnett, walked into a lawyer’s small office with a request to rewrite her will. She had done this recently with another lawyer in the same small town, but she had grown to distrust that guy. In fact, when it seemed she was a woman of great wealth, the lawyer wrote a clause to grant himself a near half-million dollar cash gift at the time of the widow’s death. Simon Latch, the new attorney, had seen his practice slide toward bankruptcy, in part because of his failed marriage, but also because of his gambling debts. The widow’s husband had apparently led a frugal life and left her with about $20,000,000 in stocks for Coca-Cola and WalMart.
Desperate to find a way to avoid his own financial demise, Simon agreed to take the case at a rather high fee for the work he would do, and he then avoided thoroughly vetting his client when she did not produce the usual documents with regard to her assets. He was afraid that if he pressed her for the information, that she would just take her estate matters to another attorney. She began to take up more and more of Simon’s time, but he kept on with the expenses that Ms. Barnett was accruing with a promise of a huge payout from her estate. Then she became ill, was hospitalized, and then died quickly under suspicious circumstances. All guilty motives pointed toward Simon.
I would rate this as an interesting book, but it’s not one which held my interest to the extent that most of his others have done. I don’t think this novel is Grisham’s best work.
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