On Monday, June 27, 1994 at 12:32:29 AM UTC-7, Mary Ellen Curtin wrote:

I had said

I've found them going steadily downhill, considered as books, though I >thought The Client was quite good as a movie treatment.

Mike Strock <mst...@eskimo.com> replied

I did not know that this movie was out yet.

What I meant was, it *reads* like a movie treatment rather than a
novel. Not surprising, given that the movie rights to his books have
been selling for enormous sums before the books even hit the stands.
As Bill Garrett <gar...@cs.unc.edu> said,

His books read
like novelizations of movies -- ie, mostly plot synopsis, poor >characterization, all the dumb "hooks" that sell movies in the US --
and poor ones, at that.

Mark goes on to say

One thing about Grisham I have found though. I sometimes have compared
him to Scott Turow, although I much prefer Grisham. Scott Turow's first >book was EXCELLENT, in my opinion (Presumed Innocent).

I believe his first book was actually _One-L_, an account of his first
year at Harvard Law School. I think it's the basis for _The Paper
Chase_.
To my taste, Turow is generally superior to Grisham. Grisham writes
stories with a great deal of action, and there's no denying that the
pages keep on turning. But Turow is more interested in the problem of motive.
I think the interest in motive is what makes mysteries the most widely
read, and possibly the most popular of genre categories (I don't know
if romances sell more titles and, if so, whether they do so by selling
more books each to fewer people). I don't know of any other genre that
has so many authors that automatically make the best-seller lists: Dick Francis, Scott Turow, John Grisham, Tony Hillerman, Sara Paretsky, Sue Grafton, Elmore Leonard, Ruth Rendell, the Kellermans, etc., etc. . . .
IMHO, this is because motive is a perpetually interesting problem, and
the combination of motive questions with danger and excitement is very
hard to resist.
One reason I like Turow so much, especially _The Burden of Proof_, is
that his books don't contain unnecessary violence. In fact, they are
just about the only modern mysteries (if that's what they are) that
pass what I modestly call "the Curtin test": "thou shalt not multiply
dead bodies beyond the minimum needed for the plot." TBoP passes with
flying colors because it is not really about whodunnit, but whydunnit.

Yours mysteriously,
Mary Ellen
internet: <p01...@psilink.com>
postal: 9 Titus Mill Rd., Pennington, NJ 08534, USA

I agree with Mary Ellen about Turow being superior to Grisham. I've read the legal and non-legal books from both writers, and find them all entertaining, but Turow is the better writer. On a different subject, "The Paper Chase" movie and TV show were
based on John Jay Osborn Jr.'s book of the same name, which was written in 1971. "One L" was published in 1977 about Turow's experience at Stanford's Law School. "Ordinary Heroes" by Turow is his best, in my opinion.

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