The Reckoning: A Novel

Grisham is usually one of my favorites for legal intrigue but this "Reckoning" was pure downer from start to finish. Oh and he threw in a horrific POW story for added grief. And some blacks treated badly in Mississippi. The main character a "war hero" shoots and kills a preacher at point blank range but refuses to say why. It was pretty obvious he believed the guy had been intimate with his wife whike he was believed dead at the hands of the Japanese in the Phillipines. His wife is in an insane asylum.

This book is disappointing. The stories, or should I say lies, are so intricately woven that there are too many unanswered questions at the end. Recounting one man's story during the Bataan Death March was necessary to a point, it went on for far too long to make its point in the main storyline. A murder was a means to an end for the former POW. I would like to have seen the horrors of The March played out in the mind of the former POW as he remained silent in his own defense while the rest of the cast tried to answer unanswerable questions. Nonetheless, two stars because it didn't fail to be a page-turner.

Unless you like morbid, do not read this book. 1/3 of the book is about the Bataan Death March during World War II and it is so horrific I just skipped over it. The point of the book is unknown. A horrible story of a family destroyed by mis-information and lies. A man who's misplaced sense of honor is more important than the legacy he leaves behind. He goes off to war, the wife thinks he's dead, she has an affair, he comes home & finds out and cannot get over it. The worst Grisham book I've ever read. Gruesome, pointless and totally tragic is not what I call wonderful. There is way too much detail in the segment on the war. How horrific it was for those soldiers. If we wanted history, we would visit the Smithsonian, not read it in a Grisham novel. Sorry, John, this was not a home run.