Rick Klau reviewed The Guardians by John Grisham
Review of 'The Guardians' on 'Goodreads'
2 stars
It's been a long while since I read a Grisham novel, and I was looking for a light read. While I applaud him for tackling an important subject - systemic racism in the criminal justice system in America is real, it's pervasive, and bringing awareness to that is a laudable goal - the book disappointed me on numerous occasions. Simple, factual errors (one particularly easy one: noting that a Black woman "breezed through Morehouse College", when Morehouse is a men's college) spoke to a lack of proximity to his main Black characters that weakened the overall message. On several occasions, he painted Black characters with too broad a brush, made more upsetting because I think he thought he was doing the opposite. Tropes abound - a haunted house (really!), an egregiously racist white sheriff, over-the-top theatrically evil drug lords - and failed to raise tension, only served to weaken the …
It's been a long while since I read a Grisham novel, and I was looking for a light read. While I applaud him for tackling an important subject - systemic racism in the criminal justice system in America is real, it's pervasive, and bringing awareness to that is a laudable goal - the book disappointed me on numerous occasions. Simple, factual errors (one particularly easy one: noting that a Black woman "breezed through Morehouse College", when Morehouse is a men's college) spoke to a lack of proximity to his main Black characters that weakened the overall message. On several occasions, he painted Black characters with too broad a brush, made more upsetting because I think he thought he was doing the opposite. Tropes abound - a haunted house (really!), an egregiously racist white sheriff, over-the-top theatrically evil drug lords - and failed to raise tension, only served to weaken the important message at the core of the book.
