Books: Playing For Pizza

Leaving the courtroom for the football field, John Grisham gives us Playing for Pizza, where we meet Cleveland Browns third-string quarterback Rick Dockery, who is lying in his hospital bed unconscious from a severe concussion. Rick, it seems, took the field at the end of an all-but-sewn-up game that would have propelled the long-suffering Browns into the Super Bowl. With Cleveland about to go bonkers, Rick throws three interceptions in the final quarter – the last resulting in the massive hit that sends him to the hospital and gives the game-winning touchdown to the Denver Broncos.

With his career at the crossroads, his agent decides a year out of the country may help Dockery. He sets him up in Italy, as the quarterback for the Parma Panthers -thus the novel already a football story, becomes a fish-out-of-water tale as well.

I had some huge problems with this book, as the many hallmarks of his - the tightly written, page turning scenes - where dropped for an almost parody take on those a Silhouette romance novels. It's that light and airy.

Plus, while this is suppose to be a football book, it resembles more part Tuscan Under the Sun style look at Italy, plus a culinary dictionary from the Food Network, and Frommer's travel guide to the country.

I'm unsure what Grisham was trying to do here, after all, I did enjoy is non-thriller novel The Painted House. I finished because I had too, but find it lacking in every regard.

poop.