Legal thrillers may be the genre that has won John Grisham most attention in his career, but his latest book 'Sooley' is a reaffirmation that when it comes to writing sport he loses nothing.
Like so many others, Grisham admitted that when realising he wouldn't succeed to the levels he aspired playing games, he decided he might do better writing on the subject.
That realisation is not confined to him, and while others might have entered the world of newspapers or magazines, he has preferred the novel format that has stood him so well in the legal world.
Sportswriting of this type is not represented by many outstanding examples, in spite of many trying. The athletics writing of Tom McNab of Flannery's Run and The Fast Men and Bernard Malamud's The Natural are sports novels of note. So to is Alan Sillitoe's The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner. Further back, Ring Lardner's You Know Me Al provided the humour of life on the road in baseball, while Michael Green's The Art of Coarse Rugby is another humorous account of his game.
But Grisham has wrapped up the pacy, yet interesting story-telling style, confirming this again with Sooley.
The same qualities of humanity, insight and nuance that mark his other books, are central to his sports stories and make for enjoyable reading. At the same time, turning to sport must be a useful diversion from dreaming up legal thriller plots.
His Playing for Pizza is a classic example. It centres on an American Football player taking up a contract in Italy, after a horrific on field experience at home.
The story tells of all of the experiences he went through when totally out of his comfort zone in a country where the NFL-style game is known even less than the rugby that New Zealanders could relate to.
However, it is hard not to believe that adapting to the Italian environment is any different for the subject of his story as it would be for a New Zealand rugby player.
Calico Joe, the story of baseballing fathers and sons, is another intriguing read as is Bleachers, about a high school football hero returning home to his coach's funeral.
But in Sooley, Grisham has dipped into the world of African anarchy and refugees with his subject from southern Sudan getting a chance to play high school basketball in the United States system.
Again, it is a timely story, told wonderfully well, with depth and understanding of basketball and with the usual Grisham kick at the end. Yet, in its formulaic manner it is compelling both from a sporting, political and humanitarian, sense.