John Grisham goes back to his law-student roots in ‘The Rooster Bar’

There was not a courtroom to be found in “Camino Island,” the first novel John Grisham published this year. Not one of the main characters in that book was in any life-threatening danger. There was more than a touch of Dashiell Hammett. There was homage paid to the convoluted, amusing caper novel, novels like those of a writer like Donald Westlake (the many Dortmunder adventures, like “The Hot Rock”).

John Grisham was having a bit of fun in that novel. That’s what he’s having in “The Rooster Bar,” too, even as he returns to the courtroom and to his usual plot involving remedying one of society’s problems. That combination of caper and social conscience is in no way a weakness; as a matter of fact, it makes this new novel an absolute page-turner.