Usually when someone asks for a “readalike,” they mean that they like a particular author and would like to find another author or two who write in the same way, whether because that author publishes infrequently, or has died and won’t be producing any more books, or whatever. But I’m afraid I mean this in a less flattering way, in that the entire time I was reading A Calamity of Souls by David Baldacci, I was thinking about all the ways in which it echoed a favorite Grisham book (and movie), A Time to Kill. The setting is a similar one (the South in the 1960s), the issue is a similar one (a black defendant with a white lawyer trying to get him a fair trial), and there is even the civil rights “savior” who arrives from the North to help the southern lawyer navigate this tricky case in front of a judge and jury who are blatantly racist. (One could also draw parallels with To Kill A Mockingbird, specifically in what ends up happening to one of the main characters.)

Although the cases are different (in ATTK, the defendant has killed his daughter’s rapist, while in this one the black man has been accused of murdering and then robbing his white employers), and although in one the legal genius from the North is a Jewish law student from New York while in the other she’s a black civil rights lawyer and hails from Chicago, the dynamic is very much the same. The difference is, I found Grisham’s story completely gripping, while Baldacci’s has some interesting moments as the two lawyers set about discovering who could have done the crime and then put their client in the hot seat to take the blame, but other than that element of mystery, a lot of the book reads like a Civics lesson.

The author takes pains to mention significant cases (Loving v. Virginia), racially charged props (the Green book, which the author has to find a roundabout way to include because it had ceased publication by 1968), sundown cities, and the like, and much of it seemed both heavy-handed and beside the point. This book presumes that the reader has no first-hand knowledge of the history of racism in the South and its manifestations in the 1960s when laws had been passed to end it but southern whites were dragging their feet to implement them. The characters are mostly one-dimensional, presenting as either a hero(ine), conflicted and confused, or irredeemably evil, with little nuance. One reviewer on Goodreads said they were uncomfortable with the portrayal of the black characters and actually felt that the author perpetuated some stereotypes while trying to do the opposite; I would have to agree.

It’s not an irredeemably bad book, but it’s not very good. It’s my first experience reading Baldacci, as far as I remember (I might have read one back in my 20s?), and to be fair I might try another of his without the obvious agenda and see if I enjoy it more, since so many people rave over his books. But…I’m certainly not on the library website looking for my next one right this minute!