SACHA PFEIFFER, HOST:
John Grisham is one of the country's most successful and prolific authors. Since his first novel came out in 1989, he's averaged about a book a year, more than 50 so far, and now he's out with another one. It's about his favorite topic, lawyers - specifically, lawyers acting badly. It's called "The Widow," and its main character is a small-town lawyer worn out by the low-level cases he's been doing for almost two decades, like foreclosures and slip-and-falls. But then an elderly woman comes to his office and needs his help. I spoke with John Grisham recently, and he picked up the plot.
JOHN GRISHAM: It's a very routine legal matter. He's going to get paid $250 for a simple will. He likes these cases because they're simple, easy and kind of pays some of the overhead. He's not accustomed to having clients with a lot of money. He's never done a will for a wealthy client. And suddenly, he realizes this client is really, really wealthy. And she has no family. She has no children. She has no friends. She's kind of lonely, and no one knows she has this money. That's the original story. That's what he thinks. And so it starts creating some ideas...
PFEIFFER: (Laughter).
GRISHAM: ...In his mind about what he might - how he might sort of ingratiate himself to her and get more involved in her affairs and earn bigger fees. It's called greed. And the greed takes over, and he starts doing things that he probably shouldn't do.
PFEIFFER: You write - in fact, this made me laugh - that he starts to feel a slight flutter in his intestines. I thought that was quite funny, about the physical effect that this dawning realization was having on him.
GRISHAM: It's the old-fashioned butterflies. It's the excitement before a big contest, but it's also the moment when you don't expect something to happen, and it might really be good for you. So yeah, a little flutter of excitement.
PFEIFFER: I'm going to mention a big plot point here, but eventually, this lawyer faces a murder charge. I don't want to give away much more. But overall, this book is a very unflattering look at lawyers. They're scheming. They're predatory. And John Grisham, this is your former profession. You practiced for 10 years, I think, back in the '80s. Why are you so hard on the legal profession?
GRISHAM: Well, you know, most lawyers are honest, hardworking people who don't make a lot of money. Your small-town solo practitioners, especially - they play by the rules and work hard. Nobody wants to read about those lawyers. You want to read about the lawyer who, you know, steals the money, fakes his own death, or the law firm that explodes and corruption. That's drama. That's good stuff to read about. And we all sort of rejoice when a lawyer gets in trouble. It's kind of our national culture, our mood, our psyche. That's what we enjoy.
PFEIFFER: Although your books sometimes do show lawyers at their best - you know, fixing injustices and reversing wrongful conviction. I'm wondering now, with the perspective you have of decades of writing about the legal profession and having practiced - overall, do you judge the profession as doing more harm or more good?
GRISHAM: Oh, definitely more good. When we face problems, legal problems, we want a good lawyer. We trust lawyers. We want to know them in case we need them. And when we need them, we want to hire the best if we can afford the best. And lawyers do so much good in society. There's so - there are thousands and thousands of great nonprofits in this country, doing all manner of great work, and all of them have lawyers. Your public interest lawyers are the happiest lawyers I've met.
PFEIFFER: People are, I think, in general, quite fascinated about what are the routines of successful novelists who write a lot, and you're obviously incredibly prolific, a real idea generator. I assume you get asked a lot about your writing routine because I noticed on your website you explain your writing routine and that it's very disciplined. You do it every day, same place, same time. You said you'd use no internet, no email, no social media, no phones, and I get that - wanting to cut yourself off. I'm wondering, though, how hard you find it to not have any access to online when you want to check something or get an idea.
GRISHAM: I'm not completely cut off. When I'm actually writing, I'm in a room, an office, with no internet and no contact because that's for concentration. That's for no interruptions. That's to get the words written. But every - probably every hour, I take a break, and I return to the house, and I get a cup of coffee, and I'll write down two or three questions that I've come across. I'll run to the internet and do a quick search. So I'm constantly searching the internet for information. The internet makes it so much easier.
And then when I finish writing for the day - and I do about 1,000 words a day, and it takes, you know, 4 or 5 hours - when that's finished around noon, I go to my office, another office in downtown Charlottesville, where I take care of business for a couple of hours, check in with New York, check in with the editor and continue to do research. So I'm not cut off from the internet. Only when I'm sitting down actually writing sentence after sentence after sentence am I offline.
PFEIFFER: You know, you are known, of course, for legal thrillers, legal procedures. It's not all you've done. You've written about many other things, but it seems to be your go-to. I used to work for the Boston Globe, and I covered the legal system, law firms, lawyers, the courts. I loved that beat because there was a drama in every courtroom. Lawyers were often smart but very unhappy and disillusioned in their jobs. And for my purposes, that created great story opportunities.
GRISHAM: Yeah.
PFEIFFER: Is - why do you like writing about the legal system in general?
GRISHAM: Well, we have a fascination for lawyers and laws. And as Americans, we have all these rights that we have or we think we have. And, you know, if somebody tampers or meddles with our rights, we're quick to sue. We're quick to hire lawyers. It's just who we are. We believe in being independent and being left alone, and if somebody bothers us, we - you know, we have a grudge. We perhaps can litigate.
And we have an insatiable appetite for stories about lawyers and law firms. And look at the - you know, the great body of legal fiction and movies and television. It's just who we are, the most litigious people on the face of the Earth, and we think that's the way it should be. And again, it's just, there's so much material. I'm overwhelmed often by just the number of stories that I could be pursuing.
PFEIFFER: Back to the - your book, "The Widow," you kind of reveal a trick of the trade that I thought was pretty funny. And you said that when a lawyer tells a client that he or she has to go to a judicial conference call or say that they're needed in federal court, that is sometimes a fancy fib to end their client meeting, which I thought was pretty funny - the sort of excuses lawyers would make to kind of wrap up a meeting.
GRISHAM: I used it all the time...
(LAUGHTER)
GRISHAM: ...For 10 years. That was one of my ways to get off a phone call or get out of a meeting. I'm sorry, the federal judge is calling. That works every time.
PFEIFFER: (Laughter) That is author John Grisham. His latest novel is "The Widow." John, thank you.
GRISHAM: Thank you, Sacha. My pleasure.
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