Book Review: Ford County by John Grisham

Category: Adult, Fiction
Details: Hardcover, 308p
Skomomma's Rating: 4 out of 5 Stars

Ford County is a collection of seven short stories based in Ford County, Mississippi. The format is great for readers who are short on time and/or don't want to commit to a full-length novel. Each story is told with the same style as Grisham uses in his other legal thriller novels. All of them have a taste of legal drama, some more than others. The book was enjoyable and only took me a couple of days to complete. I've always been a Grisham fan and this book, like most of his others, did not disappoint. Each story was well-told, even though short in-length, characters were fully developed and storylines were detailed. Most of the stories left off with a vague ending which provokes some thought on part of the reader wondering what may have happened once the written word stops.

The only thing that struck me was that the stories depicted the people of this region in a less than favorable light. Perhaps the descriptions are true to life, having grown up in the midwest, I'm not wholly familiar with the nuances of the southern culture. The characters range from intoxicated rednecks with guns, to shady small-town lawyers, to "old-money" racists. I imagine this was an intentional thread that binds these stories, but if I were from the south, I might be a little offended.