 Grisham represented the seventh district, which included DeSoto County.By his second term in the Mississippi state legislature, he was the vice-chairman of the Apportionment and Elections Committee and a member of several other committees.Grisham's writing career blossomed with the success of his second book, "The Firm", and he gave up practicing law, except for returning briefly in 1996 to fight for the family of a railroad worker who was killed on the job.