From The Widow to the Best Next Legal Thrillers for Grisham Fans

A small-town lawyer on the ropes, an elderly client with hidden wealth, and a murder charge that turns his life inside out. That is the basic story of The Widow, John Grisham’s latest thriller.

In it he shifts from straight legal thriller into a full whodunit, where he follows Virginia attorney Simon Latch as professional burnout and bad choices pull him toward disaster.

Simon’s turning point arrives when Eleanor Barnett, an eighty-five-year-old widow, asks him to update her will and quietly steward a nest egg built on “a fortune of over $16 million in Coca-Cola and Walmart stock,” money her estranged sons do not know exists.

When Eleanor is later involved in a serious car accident and events spiral toward murder, Simon finds himself in the dock, fighting to prove he is not the killer.

The book leans into classic Grisham territory of greed, secrecy, and flawed justice while adding a tighter mystery frame, with courtroom set pieces intercut with the slow unravelling of who really benefited from Eleanor’s hidden wealth. Publishers describe it as “classic Grisham courtroom drama combined with a confounding murder mystery,” a blend that has helped push The Widow to the top of bestseller lists soon after its October 2025 release.

Readers drawn to this mix of legal procedure and moral tension will find plenty of adjacent territory. David Baldacci and Scott Turow mine similar ground, using their legal backgrounds to build dense, twisting cases that echo Grisham’s focus on power and corruption. Michael Connelly’s Mickey Haller novels push closer to hard-boiled crime, while authors such as Lisa Scottoline add family and ethical drama around female lawyers and prosecutors.

Grisham’s newest novel shows there is still fresh life in the courtroom thriller when it is rooted in small-town detail and real human weakness. Readers who finish The Widow hungry for more will find an entire shelf of legal suspense that asks the same hard question The Widow circles from its first chapter to its last: what does the law really protect when big money and fragile consciences collide.

The Widow retails for about R405.