Grisham fans will be pleased, graphic details of evil behavior and all. It’s rural north Mississippi, and I’ll try to change venue to another county simply because of the notoriety.” The story runs on a touch long, as Grisham yarns tend to do, and it gets a bit gory at times, but the level of tension is satisfyingly high all the way to the oddly inconclusive end.

As well, he examines Bible Belt attitudes toward abortion and capital punishment as well as the inner workings of the courtroom, such as jury selection: “What will your jury look like?” asks a trial consultant, to which Jake replies, “A regular posse. As ever, Grisham capably covers the mores of his native turf, from gun racks to the casual use of the N-word. Backed by a brilliant paralegal whose dream is to be the first Black female lawyer in the county, he prepares for what the local sheriff correctly portends will be “an ugly trial” that may well land Drew on death row. It doesn’t help his bank book when the meaningfully named Judge Omar Noose orders him to defend the kid. Jake Brigance, the hero of the tale, is a lawyer who’s down to his last dime until a fat wrongful-death case is settled. “Did it really matter if he was sixteen or sixty? It certainly didn’t matter to Stu Kofer, whose stock seemed to rise by the hour,” writes Grisham of local opinion about giving Drew the benefit of the doubt.

Unfortunately for the kid in a place where uniforms are worshipped, Stu was a well-liked cop. He’s done terrible things to her children, too-and now her 16-year-old boy, Drew, puts an end to the terror. One night, coming home in a foul mood with a blood alcohol count more than triple the legal limit, he breaks his live-in girlfriend’s jaw. He drinks way too much and likes to brawl. A small-town Mississippi courtroom becomes the setting for a trademark Grisham legal tussle.

John grisham a time for mercy