Review: Pay attention to Grisham's 'Summons'

"The Summons"
By John Grisham
Doubleday
Fiction
341 pages

By L.D. Meagher
CNN

(CNN) -- A family tragedy, sibling friction, a small town grieving the loss of a prominent citizen, private moments of introspection. This is a John Grisham book?

Indeed, it is. "The Summons" marks Grisham's return to his familiar "legal thriller" turf, but he returns with a very different kind of story.

Ray Atlee, a law professor at the University of Virginia, receives a summons from his ailing father to return to his hometown of Clanton, Mississippi. It's a letter he has been expecting -- and dreading -- for months. He arrives at the appointed hour and finds his father dead on the couch of his home.

Following the money

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Judge Atlee was a widely respected, if little loved, jurist who spent decades dispensing justice in northern Mississippi. Ray and his younger brother Forrest grew up in the great man's shadow. In his own way, each found a way to escape -- Ray to academia, Forrest to a life of substance abuse and petty crime. They are not exactly estranged from each other, or their father, but the family is far from close-knit.

Ray finds his father's will, splitting his modest estate between his sons. Ray finds something else -- $3 million in cash squirreled away in the house. As he tries to find the source of the money, he wrestles with an ethical dilemma -- what to do with it?

The search for answers provides the "legal thriller" aspect of "The Summons." But the main thrust of the book is the emergence of Ray as a character and the unusual dynamics of the Atlee family.

Quiet power

Grisham illuminates these elements of the story in quiet moments, as when Ray receives a packet of newspaper clippings and letters of condolence following his father's death.

"The stories and photos made him sad," Grisham writes, "which was frustrating because he had not planned to be sad this Friday. He had held up quite well since discovering his father's body five days earlier. In moments of grief and sorrow, he had dug deep and found the strength to bite his lip and push forward without breaking down. The passage of time and the distance to Clanton had helped him immensely, and now from nowhere had come the saddest reminders yet."

Such intimate scenes are what propel the reader forward through "The Summons." Grisham has succeeded in constructing a rare kind of story -- a character-driven page-turner.

No doubt his legions of fans will cheer his return to his familiar genre. But his return is also a departure from formula. The result may be the most satisfying thriller Grisham has produced to date.