THE BOYS FROM BILOXI by John Grisham

 

John Grisham needs no introduction. He has been churning out best-sellers for years and this 2022 offering is just another feather in his hat. Grisham is noted for his legal thrillers, but The Boys from Biloxi goes one step further by taking four generations of two invented families and inserting them into the history of the so-called “Dixie Mafia” that ran crime and vice on the Mississippi Gulf Coast in the mid-twentieth century. The result is a huge 450 page “legal historical” thriller. His reach is spectacular, but thereby hangs the tale. The slow-building plot covers over a hundred years of ever-increasing passion and violence and although the first 150 pages seems to move at a turtle’s pace, it does finally pick up as we move toward the end.  

A summary goes like this. Keith Rudy and Hugh Malco grew up as best buds in the turbulent sixties. Their grandparents were Croatian immigrants who settled along the Mississippi Gulf Coast and worked their fingers to the bone to make better lives for their children. The boys’ parents found success, albeit in different fields of endeavor. Hugh’s father, Lance, becomes the mob chieftain of bootleg alcohol, gambling, and prostitution along the Biloxi coast. His son, Hugh, eschews more education and moves directly into helping run his father’s criminal enterprises. Young Keith follows his dad, Rudy, into Law School and joins his dad’s passion for cleaning up the crime-ridden coastal strip and its long history of crime and political payoffs.   

I note again that you need some tenacity to get through the long years of buildup to the final legal battles that Grisham is so good at generating. One problem area early on is the amount of space devoted to the early high school athletic careers of the two grandsons and the too many  pages devoted to young Hugh’s boxing career. None of it seems to have much relevance to the later developments in the story.

I would like to have seen a few more developed female characters.   The family wives in the story exist only to have babies, keep house, and weep at the sad events. Most of the rest of the females are hookers. Also pretty much ignored is the impact of the South’s vast racial problem during that time.   

I cannot deny that the book, once you get into it, is compelling. The legal maneuvering is fascinating and the interplay of differing views of loyalty, justice, morality, and the impact of family ties is sure to foster plenty of discussion amongst readers.

I give it a 4 out of 5