Grisham’s new thrill: a project in nonfiction

John Grisham’s next legal thriller will have a new twist: It will all be true. The author of “The Firm,” “The Client” and other bestsellers is writing a work of nonfiction, his first, about a death-row inmate who nearly died for a murder he didn’t commit. The book, not yet titled, is scheduled for publication in 2006.

“It’s a natural story for John to tell,” Stephen Rubin, president and publisher of Doubleday Broadway, said in a statement. “It has many of the same themes present in his novels -- legal suspense, the death penalty, wrongful conviction, even baseball.”

According to Doubleday, Grisham thought of the book after reading of Ronald Keith Williamson, once a promising athlete drafted in the 1970s by the Oakland Athletics. In 1986, he was arrested for the murder of an Oklahoma woman. Williamson was convicted. He was once within days of his scheduled execution, but DNA testing eventually proved he was innocent.

Williamson died of cirrhosis of the liver in 2004. He was 51.

“Not in my most creative hour could I imagine a story as compelling as Ron Williamson’s,” Grisham said in a statement.

Grisham won’t be the first author of courtroom novels to try nonfiction. Scott Turow, whose bestsellers include “Presumed Innocent,” wrote the nonfiction “Ultimate Punishment,” an analysis of the death penalty published in 2003.