The novel began with a professional frustration Grisham never got to resolve while he was actually practicing. For a decade in rural Mississippi, he drew up wills for clients who had almost nothing to leave behind, and he kept turning over a version of the same unanswered question: what would he have done if the picture had been reversed?

John Grisham

This story came from being a small town lawyer for 10 years in Mississippi and doing a thousand simple wills for people who didn’t need ‘em but they thought they did. I would do a simple will, I’d crank it out page and a half. I never had a client with any money, but I often thought, ‘What if I had a client who didn’t appear to have money, but had a lot of money?’ [paraphrased from audio]

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CBS Mornings, “John Grisham unveils his first-ever mystery, “The Widow””

Beyond the personal memory, there was a formal ambition: Grisham had spent his career writing legal thrillers with mystery elements woven through them, but a pure whodunnit, or in this case a pure “did he do it,” was territory he had never entered as a writer.

John Grisham

I love mysteries. I’ve never written a pure mystery, a who-dun-it, or did he do it. And I thought I would try it. [paraphrased from audio]

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The View, “John Grisham On Writing His 1st Mystery Book, ‘The Widow’ | The View”

When Goodreads readers asked him to name the single book that had pointed him toward that form, his answer went straight to Scott Turow’s 1987 courtroom novel, which had set the template for the “did he do it” structure that Grisham now wanted to attempt on his own terms.

John Grisham

The inspiration was Presumed Innocent by Scott Turow. A classic did-he-do-it?

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goodreads.com, “John Grisham answers your questions — Ask the Author”

Grisham’s usual method is to lock down the final scene before writing the first word, so he knows where he’s heading. He had that ending in hand when he finished the first draft of The Widow. Then he showed it to his wife Renee.

John Grisham

She said, ‘This ain’t working.’ And I said, ‘Well, I’ll show you.’ So I sent the book to my editor in New York, and he said, ‘This ain’t working.’ And I sent it to my publisher, and she said, ‘This ain’t working.’ I can’t fight all three of ‘em. [paraphrased from audio]

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The View, “John Grisham On Writing His 1st Mystery Book, ‘The Widow’ | The View”

Renee’s verdict was not to scrap the draft but to keep going: the story wasn’t finished. He wrote an additional 25,000 to 30,000 words in January, under deadline, and arrived at an ending he now says is better than the one he had defended.

Rewriting the ending was a structural problem, but the earlier challenge had been formal. The pure “did he do it” frame, where the central question is guilt rather than identity, required him to plant false leads in a way his legal thrillers hadn’t demanded in quite the same way.

John Grisham

It was a lot of fun solving the mystery and also figuring out how to keep the reader hooked the whole way, and, you know, some false clues here and there, some false steps and false hits and that’s, that’s the fun part of putting together a mystery. [paraphrased from audio]

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CBS Mornings, “John Grisham unveils his first-ever mystery, “The Widow””

He described the book’s basic architecture in a separate CBS Mornings appearance, framing the distinction between a whodunnit and a did-he-do-it as the governing logic behind every structural choice he made.

John Grisham

It’s a pure mystery. It’s not who done it, but did he do it? It’s a story of a lawyer who goes on trial for murder. And the question is, did he do it? And it’s a courtroom drama with a lot of good stuff, a lot of colorful characters and I had a ball writing this book. [paraphrased from audio]

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CBS Mornings, “John Grisham reveals new novel “The Widow” in exclusive first look on “CBS Mornings””

Simon Latch, the attorney at the center of The Widow, does not begin as a villain. The novel traces how a single piece of financial information, a client who hid a fortune behind an ordinary life, bends a person who should have known where the line was.

John Grisham

It’s called greed. And the greed takes over, and he starts doing things that he probably shouldn’t do.

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National Public Radio, “In John Grisham’s The Widow, a routine case leads to greed and murder”

Grisham does not think the novel indicts the profession. When NPR’s Sacha Pfeiffer asked him directly whether lawyers do more harm or more good, his answer was immediate. The misbehaving lawyer in fiction, he insisted, is a character readers seek out precisely because he is the exception.

John Grisham

Nobody wants to read about those lawyers. You want to read about the lawyer who, you know, steals the money, fakes his own death, or the law firm that explodes and corruption. That’s drama. That’s good stuff to read about. And we all sort of rejoice when a lawyer gets in trouble. It’s kind of our national culture, our mood, our psyche. That’s what we enjoy.

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National Public Radio, “In John Grisham’s The Widow, a routine case leads to greed and murder”

Simon Latch is, by that measure, exactly the character Grisham set out to write: familiar enough to be plausible, reckless enough to be compelling, and caught in a situation that began with a question Grisham himself once asked from the other side of the desk.

One detail in the novel traces directly back to something Grisham used himself during his years of practice: a professional excuse so useful he deployed it routinely. That he put it in Simon Latch’s hands says something about how close the distance is between the lawyer he was and the character he invented.

John Grisham

I used it all the time...For 10 years. That was one of my ways to get off a phone call or get out of a meeting. I’m sorry, the federal judge is calling. That works every time.

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National Public Radio, “In John Grisham’s The Widow, a routine case leads to greed and murder”