“Ford County,” John Grisham's first book of short stories, features the best-selling Southern novelist's usual assortment of sleazy lawyers, rednecks and death-row denizens. What's different: no courtroom scenes.

The book starts with a dud in “Blood Drive.” Who wants to read about a bunch of yokels so stupid they set off on a two-hour road trip to Memphis, where their neighbor, Bailey, lies in the hospital, without knowing what hospital or even if Bailey is the guy's first or last name?

The dumb Samaritans stop at every liquor store they see, not to mention a strip club. One of the men, Calvin, is a 21-year-old, 270-pound virgin, and a $20 lap dance is enough to make him forget all about poor Bailey.

“Let's get this over with already,” I thought every time they took another annoying detour.

That's the worst story in the book, but none of the others is much better. These aren't stories as much as ideas for stories that Grisham never brings to convincing life.

A man whose wife leaves him because he's too boring miraculously becomes a high-rolling blackjack player. A con man finds jobs at nursing homes, befriends the patients and gets them to change their wills in his favor.

'Funny boy'

In “Funny Boy,” a story set in 1989, a gay man moves home to Mississippi to die of AIDS. Adrian's prominent family doesn't want anything to do with him, so they arrange for him to stay in Lowtown, the black neighborhood, with Miss Emporia, a spinster who rents a house from them. In exchange, after Adrian dies, they'll give her the deed to the house.

Can you guess what happens next? The young gay white man and the older unmarried black woman discover they have plenty in common. They become friends, look out for each other, and find their own inner resources. What a surprise!

I couldn't help comparing this to Alice Elliott Dark's marvelous story “In the Gloaming,” published in 1993. A young man moves home with his parents as he, too, is dying of AIDS. He and his mother sit outside and talk, getting to know each other as adults in a way they never had before.

That was a more interesting set-up, and more subtly handled. Grisham's characters feel like puppets rather than real people; it's impossible to ignore the author's hand manipulating every stodgy, humorless scene.

“Ford County: Stories” is published by Doubleday (308 pages, $24).