Grisham tries out new venue> `The Chamber’ focuses more on legalese than all-out action

THE CHAMBER, by John Grisham, Doubleday, 486 pages, $24.95

In his four previous books, John Grisham has made a name for himself by combining the thrills of an action-packed adventure with enough legal maneuvering to find a way to get O.J. Simpson off a double-murder charge.

In his latest best seller, “The Chamber,” Grisham leaves much of the action-packed behind while focusing on a lot of legalese. Surprisingly, it works.

“The Chamber” takes young lawyer Adam Hall from a huge Chicago law firm to a hotter-than-hell region of the Mississippi delta, where Adam’s grandfather, Sam Cayhall, is awaiting execution on death row for the murder of two 5-year-old boys in a Ku Klux Klan-related bombing 23 years earlier.

After Sam’s conviction, Adam’s ashamed father moved his family west to escape the embarrasment of being a Cayhall, leaving Adam to grow up knowing little of his family’s past. When Adam’s father kills himself, making sure Adam is the only one who finds him, it opens a Pandora’s box for Adam, who wants to find out why his father’s life would end in such a tragic way.

Once he gets a taste of his family’s sordid history, learning about Sam in the process, Adam gets on with his life — law school and a prestigious law firm which has handled his grandfather’s case pro bono for years.

With time running out for Sam, Adam asks to represent his grandfather for a final effort at saving the old man from the gas chamber.

Unlike Grisham’s other best sellers, which range from “The Firm” to “The Client,” nobody is on the run in “The Chamber.” As Adam finds out about his family’s past, he ponders his decision to find answers and wants to run. But he never does.

Instead, he learns to love the grandfather he never knew — while also figuring out that this murderer of two young children is not the animal many make him out to be.

Grisham does not make Sam Cayhall lovable. Not at all. In addition to the murder of two boys, Sam had killed before. But Adam’s nonpredujicial attitude rubs off slighty on Sam and as the execution date moves closer, Sam comes to the realization of his wrongdoing, making for a touching final few chapters.

Strong points from “The Chamber” include the way Grisham tackles the subject of the death penalty, presenting views from both sides rather fairly. Some of the descriptive passages of problems relating to death by gas chamber will open the eyes of many readers as well as their minds.

Grisham’s development of character — never really a strong point in his other novels — really takes hold in his latest effort. Adam and Sam come to life like few other of Grisham’s characters.

Two notable disappointments, however, are the fate of Lee Booth — Adam’s aunt and Sam’s daughter — and Rollie Wedge, a two-bit henchman who hangs around the shadows of the book.

Grisham seems to cop out on Lee toward the end of the book and the character disappears behind the poor, unfounded excuse of alcohol-related personal problems.

Wedge, meanwhile, makes cameos here and there to build suspense which never pans out.

Compared to the positives these minors lapses are easily overlooked.

“The Chamber” is Grisham’s fifth novel, but it shows he is maturing as a writer and as a storyteller, leaving this reader waiting eagerly to see in what direction this former lawyer will head next.