The Summons.

John Grisham Doubleday www.atrandom.com 341 pp., $27.95

Another novel by John Grisham; another trip to the best-seller list. But this latest legal thriller is hardly thrilling at all and does not compare to The Firm, A Time to Kill, or even The Pelican Brief.

This time the author has come up with an interesting--but thoroughly implausible--premise for a story. Retired judge Reuben Vincent Atlee summons his son Ray, a recently divorced University of Virginia law professor, home to Clanton, Mississippi. The Judge, as even his sons call him, is dying, and he has called a family meeting to discuss administration of his estate.

Ray and his ne'er-do-well younger brother, Forrest, both revere and fear their father, as do the citizens of Ford County. He "had run his family in pretty much the same manner as he'd run his courtroom," Grisham writes. The Judge's authoritative but scrupulously principled and unyielding manner kept Ray and Forrest at a distance in their youth. The arrogant curmudgeon, of course, actually had a heart of gold. He was quietly generous to those in distress but frugal to an extreme when it came to his and his sons' needs.

The Judge is little more than a caricature of a Southern jurist. No longer on the bench, he lives a reclusive life in his decaying, antebellum mansion. He is dedicated to the Deep South's history and still mourns the Confederates' defeat in the Civil War. He celebrates his family ties to Nathan Bedford Forrest and the Battle of Shiloh.

When Ray arrives home, the family meeting he had been dreading is not to take place after all: He discovers the old man dead on a sofa in the study. The focus turns to money. The Judge has split his apparently meager estate between his two sons. Ray then stumbles upon stacks and stacks of cash--$3 million--hidden in stationery boxes in the study. What follows are Ray's highly illogical--and, at times, downright silly--attempts to guard the money and track its source.

He moves the cash in and out of cars and storage bins and counts it obsessively. He is both fascinated and consumed by the money. Grisham's explanations for how the Judge came into such a vast sum and who is trying to steal it from Ray make little sense. What begins as an amusing story becomes increasingly frustrating as Ray goes around and around in ever-widening circles during his search for answers.

Also central to the plot is Ray's relationship with Forrest, a chronic drug addict. Ray feels both love and contempt for his brother, as well as for his hometown.

Ultimately, the book is about greed and failure. Grisham directs his most stinging attacks at Patton French, another caricature, a flamboyant and overbearing class action attorney who spends his days on a yacht called "King of Torts." Ray's exchanges with French, who is motivated by avarice and self-aggrandizement, advance the plot in a most illogical fashion. Grisham, it seems, simply wanted to create an opportunity to attack the plaintiff bar. At one point, French says, "That's the beauty of mass torts, Ray. Sign 'em up by the truckload, settle 'em by the truckload, take half off the top." Reader beware.

In all fairness, Grisham is at his best when describing what he knows best. His observations of Mississippi life--from fried catfish at Claude's Diner to the memorial service for the Judge--are trenchant. It's a treat for readers to be taken back to Ford County, the fictional setting of A Time to Kill.

Many of Grisham's insights are touching, and his writing is crisp. He can still turn a sentence: "With ample time to plan his movements, [Ray] was not surprised when nothing went right."

The Summons is readable but not enthralling. Because Grisham wrote it, you're likely to find many beachgoers reading it this summer. But this is one summons you can ignore.

Laura Ariane Miller practices white-collar criminal defense law in Washington, D.C.