The Rainmaker by John Grisham (1995)
Over the years I’ve gone on all sorts of fiction kicks:
But it’s been more than 20 years now since I went through my John Grisham phase, a phase from my earliest years of college and a phase I still don’t quite understand.
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What captivated me in those Grisham books from so long ago? I’ve never had an interest in law and I’ve always been bored stiff by television courtroom dramas (Matlock excluded, of course). Perhaps it was the swell of Grisham-based movies coming out during those years that caught my attention.
A Time to Kill with its stellar cast was one of the first DVDs I ever owned (don’t ask me why). And I was movies like The Firm with Tom Cruise, The Client with Tommy Lee Jones, and The Pelican Brief with good ol’ Denzel Washington were my kind of thrillers—good versus evil in real-life situations.
Whatever the draw, I ingested a whole lot of John Grisham tales during those years, and for the next few days, I’m going to post the reviews I wrote for some of my favorites that I recently found in my old college journals—yes, I used to do this long before I ever had a site!
Brief Summary of The Rainmaker
The Rainmaker was the sixth-straight Grisham novel I had read up to that point, but from its earliest pages, I knew it would be my favorite. Rudy Baylor was a relatable protagonist for me at the time. That’s not because I was incredibly gifted or lucky in any way, but because I had just finished college and was living off my own meager savings. I had just found a tiny garage apartment to live in and was doing yard work for a little old lady to keep pancake mix and Ramen noodles in the cupboard. I was living the restless beginnings of the American dream!
The plot was gripping and held a few surprises. It wasn’t weighed down with too many hard-to-believe characters, as Grisham occasionally creates. Judge Kipler, for example, was a special gem, for I can’t recall a single other Grisham judge who seemed almost permanently on the side of the plaintiff! Somehow it seemed like a new spin for Grisham.
The love story with Kelly seemed only slightly thrown in for flavor, but it worked. As for Ms. Birdie Birdsong, well, I’m sure every reader predicts that she’ll soon enough die, leaving what meager inheritance she has to her strong, faithful lawyer, giving this book a solid happily-ever-after.
As for the writing style, its first-person viewpoint was captivating, in some ways reminding me of J.D. Salinger‘s The Catcher in the Rye. Young men on the run and doing their own thing felt exciting to twenty-something me.
Conclusion
Overall, I’d rank is one of my Grisham novels, despite its strong language. If you’ve never read him before, this might be a nice dip in the pool for you, come next vacation time.
©2025 E.T.
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Read More from John Grisham:
- The Rainmaker (1995)
- The Street Lawyer (1998)
- Skipping Christmas (2001)
- A Painted House (2001)
- The Summons (2002)
- The Broker (2005)
- Playing for Pizza (2007)
- Gray Mountain (2015)
- Camino Island (2017)
- The Rooster Bar (2017)