The Reckoning, John Grisham

  The Reckoning, was on the NYT best sellers' list. I decided to give it a go. A Google Books review reads, "#1 bestselling author John Grisham's The Reckoning is his most powerful, surprising, and suspenseful thriller yet." If this is his most powerful, most surprising and suspenseful thriller yet, then this may very well be the last of anything he wrote I will ever read. It's fine. He's rich. He doesn't need my stamp of approval. I did not read the entire book. Life is too short. There are too many other books that I want to read. I made it to the end of part one. I felt a great deal of closure when the main character was executed and I decided to leave it at that. There were a number of reasons for that.
So, John Grisham is an extremely successful author. His book,
   I thought that this book was dull. It did give me a look into the world of privilege. He built up the main character, Pete Banning, only to have him executed for the crime of murdering a pastor. Pete Banning was a war hero and a fairly wealthy farmer. He had slaves who loved him. By the end of part one of the novel, it's made evident that in all likelihood, he got revenge for something the pastor had done to his wife: maybe a rape or something along those lines.
   In this day and age of Trump, where everyone feels emboldened to be openly racist, I did not really like the tones used for black people. I didn't really like the throwback language. It's one thing to use these kinds of terms in times when people didn't know any better. But this is 2019. Grisham should know better. What kind of man is he? It almost strikes me as he might have been the kind of guy to say, 'Hey, some black people liked being slaves,' or something to that effect. That was a huge turn off for me. If that's not what he meant to do, he should have been a lot more careful.
   I definitely feel like I wasted time reading this book. Folks in Bookaholics mentioned that I ought not to judge Grisham by this one book of his and that they didn't care for it. Well, maybe one day. But I have so many hundreds of other books to read before I crack open another of his.