By the book

From the outset of “The Boys from Biloxi” (Doubleday), Grisham lays out the history of the region — really, you’ll think you’ve wandered into a Michener novel for the first 60 pages — and a time when youth baseball held its own with Friday night lights before those same youths ventured left or right, into Biloxi’s easy-money underworld or the more narrow path of hard work and education.

That underworld was the allure of early, prohibition-era Biloxi where on a single one-mile strip the “vice was so profitable that it naturally attracted the usual assortment of characters … career criminals, outlaws, bootleggers, smugglers, rumrunners, con men, hitmen, pimps, leg-breakers and a more ambitious class of crimes lords” — and the “Dixie Mafia” who settled the strip in the late 1950s.

The narrow road was for everyone else who had a dream: “Biloxi prospered because of seafood, tourism, construction and a formidable work ethic” propelled by the immigrants who envisioned a better life than the one they had left in Croatia or other struggling parts of the world.

Into this new world, “the rivalry began as a friendship between two boys with much in common,” Grisham writes. “Both were third-generation grandsons of Croatian immigrants, and both were born and raised on ‘The Point,’ as Point Cadet was known.”

From here, the stories of childhood confidantes Hugh Malco and Keith Rudy diverge with Hugh drawn to the corruption and vice of the strip as heir-apparent of his father’s criminal empire, and Keith the reluctant son of a DA father determined to “clean up the coast.” When the elder Rudy is violently killed in a mob hit that may or may not have been authorized by his former best friend, Keith enters and wins the open DA race, vowing to pick up where his father left off.

Grisham pitches a solid game in “The Boys from Biloxi,” but the story is never hit out of the park. The master storyteller keeping the pages turning, but too much of the novel is centered on variations of themes resurrected in earlier novels: the death penalty, violent crime, drugs top the list. Much of this has been offered in Grisham’s other stories — read 2018’s “The Reckoning” for the most harrowing death penalty story written by any author, ever — and the ball doesn’t move very far down the field here.

Still, Grisham manages a satisfying ending, weaving shades of gray into a final encounter between Hugh and Keith — a final appeal for both absolution and benediction whose bestowal or denial at the 11th hour will shape the reminder of their lives.

‘The New Annotated Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde’ by Robert Louis Stevenson, editor Leslie S. Klinger and Joe Hill

‘The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde’ may be the most famous story you’ve never read — and the time to rectify that is now, with The Mysterious Press’ exhaustively annotated and illustrated edition edited by horror and Victorian-era authority Leslie S. Klinger. Oh, and in addition you’ll get an excellent introduction from Joe Hill, whose own horrific pedigree is well-cemented.

The storied The Mysterious Press offers a sumptuous hardcover here — this is one of those times you’ll want to splurge on the print version — and Robert Louis Stevenson’s iconic tale of depraved murder and human nature is a case study in how to produce a library quality edition for private consumption.

Heavily illustrated doesn’t begin to cover the offerings. More than 150 full color images from the history of Stevenson’s 1886 tale include rare books, film stills, theatrical posters, classic illustrations and images of the movers and shakers — if you’ve never seen a Victorian-era “newspaper boy” hawking papers you’ll find it here — that have influenced the story’s retelling for more than a century.

Including a notebook draft and a printer’s draft of the text further fills out any scholastic longings you’ll have about Stevenson’s original (not, of course, the original original which he burned into ashes), and the annotated text is like having your favorite tweed-jacketed, pipe smoking professor at hand to interject Victorian witticisms at just the right time.

Publishing the book during the spooky season — the title dropped Oct. 18 — is a natural, but those who love mysteries or a well-crafted book will find much to enjoy during the holidays, reading for the first time a story they know by heart.