Summaries and Customer Reviews are supplied by Amazon.com

Average Customer Rating:

Fascinating

Customer Rating:

It is very difficult to imagine such a complex set of events leading to the indictment of an innocent man. This piece by John Grisham is written with exceptional skill to collate together myriad characters and events to create a compelling narrative of a true story revolving around man wrongly convicted of a brutal rape and murder. What is fascinating is that the events in the book actually occurred. John Grisham admits himself that he could not in his imagination have come up with such a story. However he does do well in creating an easy "docu-read". Overall it is a bit of a sad story, but it's certainly one of the best Grisham's I have read.

A scary book

Customer Rating:

Now this is more like it. I enjoyed the first few Grishams I read (to be honest, I pick them up from the charity shops) but then, like many others, felt that he went significantly downhill. This is an excellent book - but with one caveat. It's excellent despite Grisham's writing, not because of it. He knows his stuff, but the rather staccato style he uses in this is rather too wearing. But it gives me the willies to think how easily two ordinary folk - okay, they're rowdy but they're the sort of guys you can see in any pub or bar anywhere in the UK let alone in the US - can get swept up in a case and have no chance of escape. If Grisham had written this as a fictional novel, there would have been cries of outrage that it was totally unbelievable. There's a blind attorney, another one who throws up over the judge; there are warders who mentally torture one of the protagonists; the main defendant comes within 5 days of lethal injection... and that's just part of the story. Hidden evidence; lying convicts; blatantly wrong evidence by experts... But the scary thing is that it appears that the whole appalling tale is true. And worst of all are the photographs ... one of Ron at 18 with his life before him, one of him in his 30s when he's seen life but still looks the right age - and then a shot of the very same man at 51 but looking as though he's in his seventies - partly because his lifestyle caused him to become seriously ill, but partly because the warders overdosed him on tranquillisers when they wanted peace and quiet and took him off them when they wanted him to create hell in court. Worth reading - it'll make you look twice at any legal judgement in future.

Dry and boring

Customer Rating:

This was my first (and probably last) John Grisham novel. For me there was no meat on the bones and I certainly would not describe it as a legal thriller. It was a journalistic account of Ron Williamson's wrongful conviction which in its own way was tragic, but the book went on way too long for me in a very dry and factual way - endlessly naming so many people, many of whom were of absolutely no significance in the book at all. There was no depth to this story which there could have been if the author had really involved himself emotionally with the main characters and the story, but he didn't. I would certainly not recommend this book.

If you like True Crime

Customer Rating:

I don't bother with the John Grisham airport fodder, but as this was a true crime account I thought I'd give it a go. The fact that Grisham can obviously write thrillers really helps the narrative in this book which otherwise might be a bit slight. He pulls you through the dull sections, doesn't spend too much time on the legal wrangles and gives you just enough colour to keep the interest going. The strongest part of the book was his depiction of Death Row and for those of you who think that prison might be some sort of easy ride, this will change your mind. I finished the book feeling some of the outrage and anger that Grisham has over a justice system that so easily can fall over and, that when it does, it's human beings, families and communities that fall with it. The system isn't perfect, but it's all we've got, and books like this, you hope, will challenge it and strive to make it better.

An interesting story of injustice

Customer Rating:

After a long time of not having picked up a book by John Grisham, an author who probably suffers from overkill, I found this to be a pleasurable - and at the same time, a disturbingly unpleasurable - read. The story centres around Ron Williamson, a former baseball player with a reputation for drinking and womanising: not the most sympathetic character. Yet, Grisham turns out an engaging work of journalism. My one criticism is that it does seem one-sided, with Grisham carrying out a hatchet job (if you pardon the pun) on many members of the Oklahama police, judiciary, etc for their part in Williamson's wrongful conviction. Grisham is probably right that Ron Williamson is a victim of an horrendous injustice. Unfortunately, we do not know because the book was sourced from those closest to Ron Williamson and the other exhonerated men. The strongest message to come from the book is that the death penalty can hardly be justified. It's a shame that we have to be told this in the twenty-first century, but it's still a worthwhile read.