Published by Doubleday on October 21, 2025
The Widow feels like a novel that John Grisham has written before. The protagonist is familiar — a small-town lawyer in Virginia who writes wills, files bankruptcies, and scrapes by on the limited fees that his working-class clients can pay. The lawyer is accused of a crime and hires a criminal defense attorney who takes his case to trial before the true criminal is unmasked. While much of the story is entertaining, it is also unremarkable — a common failing of Grisham’s work.
Eleanor Barnett, an 85-year-old widow, asks Simon Latch to prepare her will. She seems reluctant to give Simon any information, but claims that her first husband had accumulated stock in Coke and Walmart that is now worth millions. Her second husband, Harry Korsak, had two children from an earlier marriage but Eleanor refused to adopt them because they were troublemakers.
Eleanor reluctantly admits that another lawyer, Wally Thackerman, prepared a will for her, but she feels uncomfortable that the will created a trust that would inherit all her property. Naturally, Wally made himself the trustee. When Simon studies the will, he discovers that Wally also made himself the beneficiary of a bequest of nearly half a million dollars (supposedly as payment for past services). Of course, Wally buried that bequest in the will and neglected to mention it to Eleanor.
Simon isn’t quite as crooked as Wally, but he sees an opportunity. He drafts a similar will, minus the unethical bequest to himself. The will leaves Eleanor’s estate to a trust that Simon will administer. Simon includes a dozen uncontroversial charitable organizations as beneficiaries of the trust. Simon figures to earn some nice fees (at double his usually hourly rate) for administering the trust.
Simon doesn’t want his long-time secretary to realize that he’s acting unethically, so he types the will himself, has it witnessed when she’s out of the office, and tells her that he’s still working out the terms of a will with Eleanor. He also tells Eleanor that she shouldn’t tell Wally about the new will. In the meanwhile, Simon ingratiates himself to Eleanor, taking her to a variety of restaurants for lunch. Eleanor loves the attention and never offers to pay for lunch. Grisham creates interesting uncertainty about whether Eleanor actually has the wealth she claims.
Eleanor isn’t much of a driver, so it’s no surprise when she becomes a bit tipsy with her best friend (another elderly woman), crashes her car, and ends up in the hospital. When she dies from pneumonia, Simon figures his investment of time has paid off. His opinion changes when an anonymous caller tells the police that Eleanor’s death is suspicious. A police detective puts a halt to an impending cremation and, when an autopsy reveals that Eleanor was poisoned, Simon is arrested.
The reader knows from the start that Simon has been framed, but he sure looks like someone who killed his client. The secrecy surrounding his drafting of the will, the haste with which he called the mortuary to arrange the cremation, and the fact that he purchased the cookies that held the poison give the prosecution a reasonably strong case against him. It doesn't help that Harry's kids show up with a lawyer of their own, hoping to get the will set aside so they can inherit their stepmother's estate.
The last third of the novel delivers some of what I crave from legal thrillers: the theatrics, strategy, and dramatic “gotcha” moments of a criminal trial. Simon persuades a criminal lawyer to handle his case for a minimal fee. I was surprised the defense lawyer didn’t make more of the anonymous call — the only person who could know that Eleanor was poisoned is the killer — and was a bit shocked that the lawyer didn’t pursue what seems to be a crucial new piece of evidence that Simon’s law school girlfriend, now an FBI agent, uncovers during the trial. Apart from my reservations about improbable strategic decisions, I regard the trial scenes as the novel’s strength.
Grisham adds interest to Simon’s character by giving him a gambling problem and a failing marriage. While people tend to think of lawyers as wealthy, he makes clear that drafting wills and handling bankruptcies in a small town is not lucrative. Simon might be a broke gambler, but he cares about his children, so if he isn’t admirable, at least he isn’t evil.
The whodunit — the poisoner’s identity — comes out of left field. It isn’t an impossible solution but struck me as a failure of imagination. While the story is sufficiently engaging to earn a recommendation, The Widow nestles into the “good, not great” territory that more than half of Grisham’s novels occupy.
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