Published in October 2025, The Widow marks a genre shift for Grisham: his first true whodunit, layered onto his familiar legal-thriller machinery. The novel follows Simon Latch, a small-town Virginia lawyer whose practice survives on low-stakes work — wills, minor disputes, the unglamorous churn of rural legal life — while his marriage quietly disintegrates and a gambling habit eats at his finances. His fortunes appear to turn when Eleanor Barnett, an elderly widow, arrives needing a new will and reveals she's sitting on a substantial, undisclosed fortune. Simon works to keep her as his client and her wealth under wraps, sensing the biggest payday of his career — until Eleanor is hospitalized after a car accident and it becomes clear her story doesn't hold together the way it seemed to. Simon is subsequently charged with her murder, based on circumstantial but damaging evidence, and the novel's second half becomes a courtroom fight for his freedom, with Simon simultaneously trying to identify the real killer to clear his name. Grisham uses the slow-burn first half to establish Simon as a flawed but sympathetic protagonist — his debts, his failing marriage, his moral compromises — before the plot accelerates into trial and investigation. Reviewers have noted the novel rewards patience: the courtroom sequences are classic Grisham, and the central twist regarding Eleanor's true nature is the book's most talked-about element, though not everyone has found the final reveal fully earned.