Grisham whistles for number one

John Grisham’s The Whistler (Hodder) has blown Martina Cole’s Betrayal (Headline) out of the UK Official Top 50 number one spot, selling 20,889 copies for £78,985 according to Nielsen BookScan’s Total Consumer Market. This is the veteran author’s 31st number one, and his first since July 2013.  It comes just four weeks after his latest hardback Camino Island crested the Original Fiction and Weekly E-Ranking number ones.

The success of last year’s Rogue Lawyer, his third-bestselling title since the turn of the decade, seems to have given Grisham’s sales a shot in the arm. In total, he’s now only £500k off the £90m mark. With Camino Island and its trade paperback hanging on in 15th and 17th place in Original Fiction, and The Innocent Man making an appearance in Paperback Non-Fiction, only the Hardback Non-Fiction top 20 was a Grisham-free zone last week.

Shari Lapena’s The Couple Next Door (Corgi) held second place overall, while Sophie Kinsella’s My Not So Perfect Life (Black Swan) entered the Top 50 in third. David Baldacci’s No Man’s Land (Pan) came in just below Betrayal, in fifth place, making four crime titles in the top five.

David Walliams’ The World’s Worst Children 2 (HarperCollins Children's) dropped out of the top five, but clenched the Children’s top spot—the comedian-turned-author’s 100th—by over 8,000 copies, with Julia Donaldson and Lydia Monks’ What the Ladybird Heard on Holiday (Macmillan Children's) in a distant second. Not only has no other kids’ author reached this pinnacle—J K Rowling and Stephenie Meyer are joint second, with 76 Children’s number ones apiece—but no author in any fiction category has racked up so many number ones. Dan Brown holds the Mass Market Fiction record, with 79, while Paula Hawkins is queen of hardbacks with 35. Only Jamie Oliver has rustled up more category top spots than Walliams—the chef has hit the Hardback Non-Fiction number one a whopping 139 times.

Walliams said: “I never dreamed of this scale of success. Thank you so much to everyone who bought the books and made this happen. It is incredible news but all that really matters is that children are reading and enjoying my books.” His publisher HarperCollins said Walliams’ international sales exceeded 19.3m copies to date.

The Paperback Non-Fiction record-holder with 54 number ones, Joe Wicks, made a return to, contrarily, the Hardback Non-Fiction number one last week, with Cooking for Family and Friends (Bluebird) reclaiming its top spot from Charlotte Crosby’s Brand New Me (Headline). However, The Lean in 15 Collection—a three-book offer as part of Amazon’s Prime Day—missed out on Wicks’ 55th Paperback Non-Fiction pole, as YouTuber Alfie Deyes' The Pointless Book 3 (Blink) swiped the top spot, beating incumbent number one Sapiens (Vintage) by just over 200 copies. This is Deyes' 21st Paperback Non-Fiction top spot, and his first since 2015.

The Original Fiction chart saw an all-new top six, with Santa Montefiore’s The Last Secret of the Deverills (Simon & Schuster) seeing off all competition for the author’s first ever top spot in the category chart. She was followed by Peter Robinson’s Sleeping in the Ground (Hodder & Stoughton), Carrie Hope Fletcher’s All That She Can See (Sphere) and Michael Connelly’s The Late Show (Orion), all shifting within 250 copies of one another.

The print market's average selling price might finally be declining off its record highs—at £8.08, it hit its lowest level since the week of World Book Day in March. But value rocketed, posting a 1.7% jump on the same week in 2016 and surpassing £27m for only the second week in 2017 to date.