Thriller writer John Grisham talks to Hannah Stephenson about keeping a low profile, and his new foray into children’s fiction.

HIS legal thrillers grace the best-seller shelves of virtually every mainstream bookshop on the planet and are among the most popular choices for travellers.

Indeed, John Grisham once held an impromptu book signing session on a Boeing 747 after word got around that he was in first-class and piles of his novels were passed to the front of the plane by fellow passengers wanting an autograph.

Yet the former Mississippi lawyer remains a largely anonymous figure. He can stand under a huge billboard of his latest novel in virtually any bookshop and go unnoticed – and that’s just the way he likes it.

“I laugh when I tell people I’m a famous writer in a country where nobody reads,” he says in his deep Southern drawl.

While many of his books have been made into big budget movies, including The Firm, starring Tom Cruise, The Pelican Brief, with Denzel Washington and Julia Roberts, and The Client, starring Susan Sarandon, Grisham has never yearned for a glitzy lifestyle in Hollywood.

The 55-year-old ex-lawyer, whose thrillers have sold in their millions, been translated into 29 languages and published in more than 40 countries, prefers to go quietly about the business of writing, does very few interviews and stays out of the spotlight, living on his 1,000-acre farm in rural Virginia with his wife, Renee, to whom he has been married for nearly 30 years.

But on his first visit to England in four years, he is affable, more casual than the smart-suited ex-lawyer I’d expected, and has a dry sense of humour.

“We’re bumpkins,” he explains.

“I’m just not cut out for city life. I walk down the street in New York or Chicago, or almost every state I go to, and nobody recognises me.

That’s good.”

Today he’s keen to talk about his latest novel, Theodore Boone, the first in a new children’s series aimed at eightto 12-year-olds.

The eponymous hero, a 13- year-old whose parents are busy lawyers, spends a lot of time in the courthouse, knows all the officials, police and judges and advises friends and their parents on everything from rescuing an impounded dog to drink-driving offences.

The plot thickens as Theo is drawn into a murder trial when he finds a witness whose evidence could change the verdict.

Grisham says his move into children’s fiction was mostly to encourage children to read and educate them about the law, but had he another motive?

“I’m trying to catch Harry Potter; I’ve been after him for ten years,” he jokes. “Back in the Nineties I was routinely introduced as the best-selling author in the world and I was trying to act like it was no big deal, then along came Harry Potter and suddenly I became No 2. I really miss being No 1. No, I’m joking.”

He moved from his home in the small town of Oxford, Mississippi, in the early Nineties, to escape attention.

“There were some intrusions but only one tour bus,” he recalls.

They planned to stay in their present house in Virginia for a year, but 16 years on they’re still there. Their son Ty, 27, and daughter Shea, 24, have left home but are not too far away. Ty has just qualified as a lawyer and lives in Washington, while Shea is a schoolteacher.

Born in Arkansas, to a construction worker and a homemaker, Grisham dreamed of being a professional baseball player. Realising he wasn’t going to make the grade, he became a lawyer and practised for ten years.

One day at the courthouse, Grisham overheard the harrowing testimony of a 12- year-old rape victim and was inspired to write his first novel, A Time To Kill. It was rejected by 28 publishers before it was finally accepted and published in 1988, selling only 5,000 copies.

But when the film rights to his second novel, The Firm, were snapped up by Paramount for a staggering $600,000, this moment changed his life. The novel spent a spectacular 47 weeks on the New York Times bestseller list.

Grisham may have branched out into children’s books but he’s keen to continue with the legal thrillers. The next one, The Confession, is due out in the autumn.

● Theodore Boone by John Grisham is published by Hodder & Stoughton, priced £12.99.