Law and politics Grisham practiced law for about a decade and won election as a
Democrat to the
Mississippi House of Representatives, serving from 1983 to 1990. He challenged the incumbent after becoming embarrassed by Mississippi's national reputation and inspired by the passage of the
Education Reform Act of 1982. Grisham represented the 7th District, which included
DeSoto County, Mississippi. By his second term in the state legislature, he was the vice-chairman of the Apportionment and Elections Committee and a member of several other committees. This would begin a streak of having one of the top 10 best selling novels of the year for nearly the next two decades. In 1992 and 1993, he had the second-bestselling book of the year with
The Pelican Brief and
The Client, and from 1994 to 2000 he had the number one bestselling book every year. In 2001, Grisham did not have the bestselling book of the year, but had both the second and third books on the list with
Skipping Christmas and
A Painted House. In 1992,
The Firm was made into a
film starring
Tom Cruise and
Ed Harris and was released in June 1993, grossing $270 million. A feature film version of
The Pelican Brief starring
Julia Roberts and
Denzel Washington was released later that year and grossed $195 million. Following their success,
Regency Enterprises paid Grisham $2.25 million for the rights to
The Client which was released in 1994 starring
Susan Sarandon and
Tommy Lee Jones.
Universal Pictures then commissioned Grisham with the highest amount ever for an unpublished novel, paying $3.75 million for the rights to
The Chamber. In August 1994,
New Regency paid a record $6 million for the rights to
A Time to Kill, with Grisham asking for a guarantee that
Joel Schumacher, the director of
The Client, would direct. Beginning with
A Painted House, Grisham broadened his focus from law to the more general rural South but continued to write legal thrillers at the rate of one per year. In 2002, he once again claimed the number one book of the year with
The Summons. In 2003 and 2004, he missed the number one bestseller of the year due to the success of
The Da Vinci Code by
Dan Brown, but he once again produced two novels which ended the year
in the top 5. In 2004,
The Last Juror ended the year at number four, and in 2005 he overtook
The Da Vinci Code and returned to number one for the year with
The Broker. The year 2006 marked the first time since 1990 that he did not have one of the top-selling books of the year, but he returned to number two in 2007, number one in 2008, and number two in 2009. Grisham has also written sports fiction and comedy fiction. He wrote the original
screenplay for and
produced the 2004 baseball movie
Mickey, which starred
Harry Connick Jr. In 2005, Grisham received the
Peggy V. Helmerich Distinguished Author Award, which is presented annually by the
Tulsa Library Trust. In 2010, Grisham started writing a series of legal thrillers for children. They feature
Theodore Boone, a 13-year-old who gives his classmates legal advice on a multitude of scenarios, ranging from rescuing impounded dogs to helping their parents prevent their house from being repossessed. He said, "I'm hoping primarily to entertain and interest kids, but at the same time I'm quietly hoping that the books will inform them, in a subtle way, about law." He also stated that it was his daughter, Shea, who inspired him to write the Theodore Boone series. "My daughter Shea is a teacher in North Carolina and when she got her fifth grade students to read the book, three or four of them came up afterwards and said they'd like to go into the legal profession." In 2011 and 2012, his novels
The Litigators and
The Racketeer claimed the top spot in
The New York Times best seller list. The novels were among the best selling books of those years, spending several weeks atop various best seller lists. In 2013, he again reached the top five in the
US best-seller list. In November 2015, his novel
Rogue Lawyer was at the top of the
New York Times Fiction Best Seller for two weeks. In 2017, Grisham released two legal thrillers.
Camino Island was published on June 6, 2017. The book appeared at the top of several best seller lists including
USA Today,
The Wall Street Journal, and
The New York Times.
The Rooster Bar, published on October 24, 2017, was called "his most original work yet", in
The News Herald, and a "buoyant, mischievous thriller" in
The New York Times.
Southern settings Several of Grisham's legal thrillers are set in the fictional town of Clanton, Mississippi, located in the fictional Ford County, a northwest Mississippi town still deeply divided by racism. The first novel set in Clanton was
A Time to Kill. Other stories set there include
The Last Juror,
The Summons,
The Chamber,
The Reckoning,
A Time for Mercy, and
Sycamore Row. The stories in the collection
Ford County are also set in and around Clanton. Other Grisham novels have non-fictional
Southern settings, for example
The Partner,
The Runaway Jury, and
The Boys from Biloxi are set in
Biloxi, and large portions of
The Pelican Brief in
New Orleans.
A Painted House is set in and around the town of
Black Oak, Arkansas, where Grisham spent some of his childhood. ==Personal life==