So the dependable crankers-outers of blockbuster bestsellers are seeing their book sales sag. Your Tom Clancys, your Stephen Kings, your John Grishams – “the old guard is visibly sagging. Like childbearing, delivering blockbusters every year takes it out of you. King’s latest reads suspiciously like a Christine retread (old cars with strange powers). Clancy (with his fantasia of papal assassination) bet the store on John Paul II dying, and the pontiff perversely didn’t (despite Cardinal Law’s best efforts). So, too, with Turow’s and Grisham’s legal thrillers. It’s all deja lu; been there, read that.”