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#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • The master of the legal thriller probes the savage depths of racial violence in this searing courtroom drama featuring the beloved Jake Brigance.
“John Grisham may well be the best American storyteller writing today.”—The Philadelphia Inquirer
The life of a ten-year-old black girl is shattered by two drunken and remorseless white men. The mostly white town of Clanton in Ford County, Mississippi, reacts with shock and horror at the inhuman crime—until the girl’s father acquires an assault rifle and takes justice into his own hands.
For ten days, as burning crosses and the crack of sniper fire spread through the streets of Clanton, the nation sits spellbound as defense attorney Jake Brigance struggles to save his client’s life—and then his own.
Don’t miss any of John Grisham’s gripping books featuring Jake Brigance:
A TIME TO KILL • SYCAMORE ROW • A TIME FOR MERCY • SPARRING PARTNERS
About John Grisham
John Grisham (born February 8, 1955 in Jonesboro, Arkansas) is an American novelist, lawyer and former member of the 7th district of the Mississippi House of Representatives, known for his popular legal thrillers. According to the American Academy of Achievement, Grisham has written 28 consecutive number-one fiction bestsellers, and his books have sold 300 million copies worldwide. Along with Tom Clancy and J. K. Rowling, Grisham is one of only three authors to have sold two million copies on a first printing.
Grisham graduated from Mississippi State University and earned a Juris Doctor from the University of Mississippi School of Law in 1981. He practised criminal law for about a decade and served in the Mississippi House of Representatives from 1983 to 1990.
Grisham’s first novel, A Time to Kill, was published in June 1989, four years after he began writing it. Grisham’s first bestseller, The Firm, sold more than seven million copies. The book was adapted into a 1993 feature film of the same name, starring Tom Cruise, and a 2012 TV series which continues the story ten years after the events of the film and novel. Seven of his other novels have also been adapted into films: The Chamber, The Client, A Painted House, The Pelican Brief, The Rainmaker, The Runaway Jury, and Skipping Christmas.
Grisham is a two-time winner of the Harper Lee Prize for Legal Fiction and was honored with the Library of Congress Creative Achievement Award for Fiction.
When he’s not writing, Grisham serves on the board of directors of the Innocence Project and of Centurion Ministries, two national organizations dedicated to exonerating those who have been wrongfully convicted. Much of his fiction explores deep-seated problems in our criminal justice system.
John Girsham lives on a farm in central Virginia.
About Jake Brigance (3 book series)
1. A Time to Kill (Jake Brigance Book 1)
A Time to Kill is a 1989 legal thriller and debut novel by American author John Grisham. The novel was rejected by many publishers before Wynwood Press eventually gave it a 5,000-copy printing. When Doubleday published The Firm, Wynwood released a trade paperback of A Time to Kill, which became a bestseller. Dell published the mass market paperback months after the success of The Firm, bringing Grisham to widespread popularity among readers. Doubleday eventually took over the contract for A Time to Kill and released a special hardcover edition.
In 1996, the novel was adapted into a namesake film, starring Sandra Bullock, Matthew McConaughey, and Samuel L. Jackson. In 2011, it was further adapted into a namesake stage play by Rupert Holmes. The stage production opened at the Arena Stage in Washington, D.C. in May 2011 and opened on Broadway in October 2013. The novel spawned two sequels currently, Sycamore Row, released in 2013, and A Time for Mercy, released in 2020.
Plot
In the small town of Clanton, in fictional Ford County, Mississippi, a ten-year-old African-American girl named Tonya Hailey is viciously raped and beaten by two white supremacists, James “Pete” Willard and Billy Ray Cobb. Tonya is later found and rushed to the hospital while Pete and Billy Ray are heard bragging at a roadside bar about their crime. Tonya’s distraught and outraged father, Carl Lee Hailey, consults his friend Jake Brigance, a white attorney who had previously represented Hailey’s brother, on whether he could get himself acquitted if he killed the two men. Jake tells Carl Lee not to do anything stupid, but admits that if it had been his daughter, he would kill the rapists. Carl Lee is determined to avenge Tonya, and while Pete and Billy Ray are being led into holding after their bond hearing, he kills both men with an M16 rifle.
Carl Lee is charged with capital murder. Despite efforts to persuade Carl Lee to retain high-powered attorneys, he elects to be represented by Jake. Helping Jake are two loyal friends, disbarred attorney and mentor Lucien Wilbanks, and sleazy divorce lawyer Harry Rex Vonner. Later, the team is assisted by liberal law student Ellen Roark, who has prior experience with death penalty cases and offers her services as a temporary clerk pro bono. Ellen appears to be interested in Jake romantically, but the married Jake resists her overtures. The team also receives some illicit behind-the-scenes help from black county sheriff Ozzie Walls, a figure beloved by the black community and also well respected by the white community who upholds the law by arresting Carl Lee but, as the father of two daughters of his own, privately supports Carl Lee and gives him special treatment while in jail and goes out of the way to assist Jake in any way he legally can. Carl Lee is prosecuted by Ford County’s district attorney, Rufus Buckley, who hopes that the case will boost his political career. It is claimed that the judge presiding over Carl Lee’s trial, Omar “Ichabod” Noose, has been intimidated by local white supremacist elements. Noose refuses Jake’s request for a change of venue, even though the racial make-up of Ford County virtually guarantees an all-white jury, which later becomes the case.
Billy Ray’s brother, Freddy, seeks revenge against Carl Lee, enlisting the help of the Mississippi branch of the Ku Klux Klan and its Grand Dragon, Stump Sisson. Subsequently, the KKK attempts to plant a bomb beneath Jake’s porch, leading him to send his wife and daughter out of town until the trial is over. Later, the KKK attacks Jake’s secretary, Ethel Twitty, and kills her frail husband, Bud. They also burn crosses in the yards of potential jurors to intimidate them. On the day the trial begins, a riot erupts between the KKK and the area’s black residents outside the courthouse; Stump is killed by a molotov cocktail. Believing that the black people are at fault for Stump’s death, the KKK increase their attacks.As a result, the National Guard is called to Clanton to keep the peace during Carl Lee’s trial. The KKK shoots at Jake one morning as he is being escorted into the courthouse, missing Jake but seriously wounding one of the guardsmen assigned to protect him. Soon after, Ellen Roark is abducted and assaulted. They burn down Jake’s house. During trial deliberations, the jury’s spokesman is threatened by a KKK member with a knife. Eventually, they torture and murder “Mickey Mouse”, one of Jake’s former clients who had infiltrated the KKK and subsequently gave anonymous tips to the police, allowing them to anticipate most KKK attacks.
Despite the loss of his house and several setbacks at the start of the trial, Jake perseveres. He badly discredits the state’s psychiatrist by establishing that he has never conceded to the insanity of any defendant in any criminal case in which he has been asked to testify, even when several other doctors have been in consensus otherwise. He traps the doctor with a revelation that several previous defendants found insane in their trials are currently under his care despite his having testified to their “sanity” in their respective trials. Jake follows this up with a captivating closing statement.
On the day of the verdict, tens of thousands of black citizens gather in town and demand Carl Lee’s acquittal. The unanimous acquittal by reason of temporary insanity is only achieved when one of the jurors asks the others to seriously imagine that Carl Lee and his daughter were white and that the murdered rapists were black. Carl Lee returns to his family and the story ends with Jake, Lucien and Harry Rex having a celebratory drink before Jake holds a press conference and leaving town to reunite with his family.
Read More: [Review-Quotes] A Time to Kill (Jake Brigance Book 1) by John Grisham
2. Sycamore Row (Jake Brigance Book 2)
Sycamore Row is a legal thriller novel by American author John Grisham published by Doubleday on October 22, 2013. The novel reached the top spot in the US best-seller list. It is preceded by A Time to Kill and followed by A Time for Mercy.
Plot
The title refers to a row of sycamore trees in the countryside near the fictional town of Clanton, in fictional Ford County, Mississippi. The trees play an important role in the book’s plot, though the full significance becomes clear only in the end of the novel. It is suggested that these sycamores are very old, having been planted by Native Americans prior to the arrival of European settlers and their stolen, enslaved Africans in what would become the state of Mississippi.
The story begins three years after the sensational events in the trial of Carl Lee Hailey (A Time to Kill). An employee of wealthy recluse Seth Hubbard is instructed to meet his boss at a location by these sycamores one early Sunday afternoon. The employee finds Mr. Hubbard has hanged himself from the tree because his terminal lung cancer had become too painful. Accompanying the body are very specific funeral and burial instructions.
Jake Brigance, Carl Lee’s former attorney, had gained much fame after the Hailey trial, as well as the respect of the black community and of many whites, but he has little to no money to show for it. During the Hailey trial, the Ku Klux Klan had tried to intimidate Jake by burning his home. Jake has yet to see any of the insurance money for the burnt house, which is tied up in litigation with his own insurance company.
Jake receives a letter sent by Hubbard just before he killed himself, containing a new holographic will that renounces a will he filed the year before in which he leaves all his assets to his daughter and son as well as his grandchildren. In this new will, Hubbard stipulates that his children will receive nothing. Instead, five percent will be given to the local church and another five percent will be left to his long-disappeared brother, Ancil Hubbard. The remaining ninety percent is to be given to his black housekeeper Letitia “Lettie” Lang. Further instructions stipulate that the will must not be filed for probate until after Hubbard’s funeral so that his children, who rarely visited him during his bout with cancer, can put on a show not knowing that they will ultimately be left with nothing.
Hubbard notes that his children will certainly contest the new will because they are greedy and that Jake must do whatever it takes to make sure the new will is enforced. He says he chose Jake because of the admirable work that Jake did during the Hailey trial.
Soon, Jake finds out that Hubbard had earned more than $20 million in a lumber yard business, a fortune unmatched by any other individual in Ford County. As the executor publishes this sum, the entire town of Clanton shifts their attention to the case.
Hubbard’s children attempt to contest their father’s new will by claiming he was not capable when filing it, igniting a hotly contested court battle with many twists and turns. Jake’s first concern is to prevent the trial from becoming a race issue of blacks vs. whites. Since Ford County has a white majority, the jury would almost certainly also be majority white. On the other hand, whites in Ford County are far from completely biased, as proven by the fact that voters had elected a black sheriff to two consecutive terms by an overwhelming majority. Jake believes that if the race issue is toned down, the jury might rule for Lettie on the case’s own merits, i.e. that Hubbard made his money himself and had the right to leave it to whoever he wanted and that he knew what he was doing when changing his will.
First, Jake must get rid of a rabble-rousing black lawyer from Memphis who goes to Clanton and involves himself in the case while engaging in a series of provocative acts which risk the chances of winning the case. Then, Lettie’s husband, with whom she is on bad terms, kills two teens while driving drunk, arousing great passions against the Lang family and hurting their chance of a fair trial. As a measure of damage control, Jake convinces Lettie to immediately file for divorce (which was on her mind anyway).
The trial finally begins and goes well. Jake builds his case, and Lettie’s own testimony makes a good impression on the jury and Jake succeeds in discrediting the testimonies of Hubbard’s children and their assertion to have been close to their father and deeply caring during his illness. However, the opposing lawyer manages to spring a surprise witness, whose testimony seems to show that Lettie had tried to influence an earlier ailing employer to leave her money in a will, creating a suspicion of her systematically preying on the weakness of elderly ailing people. Still another surprise witness, a former black female employee with whom Hubbard had sexual relations comes forward, implying that Lettie had also slept with Hubbard.
The trial looks lost for Jake, with even the two black jurors starting to strongly doubt Lettie’s credibility. At the last moment, the trial is changed again by a sensational deposition given by Hubbard’s long-lost brother Ancil. Ancil, who had a very traumatic childhood, had left Ford County and joined the U.S. Navy at the age of 17, vowing never to return. Since then, he had led an adventurous and often criminal life around the world under a variety of assumed names, until finally being located as a bartender in Juneau, Alaska.
The disbarred Lucien, Jake’s friend and ex-partner who is an alcoholic but when sober still a sharp legal mind, goes to Alaska and manages to obtain Ancil’s testimony. Ancil explains why Seth left the money to his housekeeper and the significance of the sycamore tree from which he hung himself.
In the 1920s, Lettie’s grandfather Sylvester, whom she never knew, owned a considerable plot of land. His being a landowner was very much a rarity for a black person in the segregationist Deep South, and was greatly resented by racist whites in general and in particular by his neighbor, Cleon Hubbard, who laid a claim to Sylvester’s land. Hubbard, an abusive man who was often violent toward his wife and two sons, Seth and Ancil, tried to go to court. However, Sylvester had an unassailable title to the land, registered by the family during the Reconstruction period when federal troops, present in the South in the aftermath of the Civil War, upheld the rights of blacks.
Having failed in court, Hubbard resorted to the alternative method available at the time to whites in the Deep South, i.e. lynch law. Sylvester was falsely accused of “speaking rudely to white women”, which, together with resentment at his being a black landowner, was enough to mobilize a lynch mob. Several men dragged Sylvester from his home and hanged him from a sycamore tree. His sons, Ancil and Seth, who did not share their father’s prejudice and sometimes played with the black children, secretly observed this scene with great horror. Subsequently, Cleon Hubbard intimidated Esther, Lettie’s grandmother, who had just seen her husband being murdered with impunity, and forced her to sign away the family’s ownership for a pittance – with a promise that she could continue residing on the property. However, the promise was promptly broken, and Cleon and the sheriff then expelled the entire extended family and set fire to their homes and small chapel, totally eradicating the small black community which had been known as “Sycamore Row”. Esther, along with her five-year-old daughter (who would become Lettie’s mother), had to escape with virtually no possessions. An older child, with whom the Hubbard boys sometimes played, drowned in a river during the final expulsion.
Years later, Seth Hubbard used the property gained by his father as collateral for a mortgage in order to build his lumber yard. Knowing that his success was partly owed to this mortgage and wanting to make up for the injustice caused by his father, he decided to give the majority of his capital to Lettie and in a final act hung himself from the same tree from which Lettie’s grandfather was hung.
After hearing Ancil Hubbard’s testimony, the jury unanimously upholds the will and rejects the claims against its validity by Hubbard’s children. However, an appeal seems very probable, which might last for years and consume a large part of the estate in legal fees. Moreover, the judge’s decision to let the jury hear Ancil Hubbard’s testimony might be challenged on procedural grounds (it was a recorded testimony and opposing counsel could not cross-examine him). Therefore, Judge Reuben Atlee suggests the parties settle the case with reasonable conditions. As the judge suggests, after Ancil Hubbard and the local church get their promised share, $5 million would be given to a fund providing college education to members of Lettie’s family, all of whom share in the terrible legacy of the 1930 lynching and expulsion. Such a fund would also help Lettie get off her back numerous relatives who had shown up since the news spread that she would become rich. Jake would be in charge of this fund, giving him steady employment but also a lot of headaches. The remaining $6 million would be divided equally between Lettie and Seth Hubbard’s children.
The compromise is acceptable to everybody. Lettie is content to get back the land which belonged to her grandfather and build on it a nice house for herself, her children and grandchildren and does not mind Seth Hubbard’s children getting at least some of his money. In the final scene, Ancil Hubbard arrives from Alaska and has an emotional meeting with Lettie and other protagonists under the sycamore tree, she asking him to let the past lie and look to a better future.
Read More: [Review-Quotes] Sycamore Row (Jake Brigance Book 2) by John Grisham
3. A Time for Mercy (Jake Brigance Book 3)
A Time for Mercy, a legal thriller novel by American author John Grisham, is the sequel to A Time to Kill (his first novel, published in 1989) and Sycamore Row (published in 2013). The latest book features the return of the character Jake Brigance, a small-town Mississippi lawyer who takes on difficult cases. The novel was released on 13 October 2020.
Once again, Brigance is the court-appointed lawyer who seeks truth and justice for his client, in this case a sixteen-year-old boy named Drew Gamble, who is charged with murdering a law enforcement officer and faces the death penalty. As Jake digs into the details of the case, he knows he has to find a way to save the boy, even at the risk of his career and his family’s safety.
Plot
In 1990, five years after successfully defending accused murderer Carl Lee Hailey (in A Time to Kill, the first book in the series), attorney Jake Brigance of fictional Clanton (Ford County), Mississippi, is assigned by Circuit Court Judge Omar Noose to the case of 16-year-old Drew Gamble. The boy was accused of murder after he shot and killed Stuart Kofer, a deputy sheriff who was his mother Josie’s boyfriend.
After Josie, along with her 14-year-old daughter Kiera and Drew, moved in with Kofer, the deputy beat them on many occasions after coming home drunk. Josie called 911 several times but never pressed charges. Since Kofer performed well when he was sober and was well-liked by his fellow officers, no reports were filed, and Sheriff Ozzie Walls was unaware of Kofer’s violent tendencies when he was drunk. On the night of the murder, Kofer again came home in a drunken rage and knocked Josie unconscious while breaking her jaw. Both Drew and Kiera thought their mother was dead and were afraid of what Kofer might do after he came to from his stupor. After calling 911 to report the situation, Drew used Kofer’s service pistol to shoot the deputy in the head.
Taking the case puts Brigance at odds with most of the residents of Clanton, as well as the local law enforcement community, including his longtime friend Sheriff Walls. He tries to convince Judge Noose to find another lawyer to defend young Gamble but to no avail. Meanwhile, Brigance and his associate Harry Rex Vonner are working on a tort case against the Central and Southern Railroad. The case involves the death of a young family named Smallwood in a collision with a train at a poorly maintained crossing. Brigance needs to win that case, also in Judge Noose’s court, in order to pay the costs of defending Drew Gamble, as Drew’s mother is penniless and the government will only pay Brigance a small stipend of $1,000.
With the assistance of his paralegal Portia Lang and the advice of his mentor Lucien Wilbanks, Brigance puts together a case he hopes will sway at least some jurors to find young Gamble not guilty. The strategy is based on the fact that Kiera Gamble is pregnant after being sexually assaulted by Kofer. By concealing the pregnancy until the trial, the element of surprise does indeed have the desired effect, resulting in a hung jury and the release of Drew Gamble on bail. Because Josie Gamble wants her daughter to avoid the problems she had faced as a young mother, she agrees to let Brigance and his wife Carla adopt the baby.
Meanwhile, Judge Noose orders Ford County to pay Brigance in full for his time and expenses of defending Drew Gamble, a decision which is promptly appealed by the attorney for the county. In addition, Wilbanks suggests a way for Brigance to get the Smallwood case moved to chancery court, where the case can be tried without a jury and Judge Reuben Atlee will undoubtedly force the railroad into a settlement.
Read More: [Review-Quotes] A Time for Mercy (Jake Brigance Book 3) by John Grisham
Highlights: Jake Brigance (3 book series) by John Grisham
Jake Brigance book 1 – A Time to Kill
“A lawyer had to be himself in the courtroom, and if he was afraid, so be it. The jurors were afraid too. Make friends with fear, Lucien always said, because it will not go away, and it will destroy you if left uncontrolled.”
“Blacks had an excuse for being worthless, but for whites in a white world, there were no excuses.”
“Billy Ray Cobb was the younger and smaller of the two rednecks.”
“Mr. Buckley, let me explain it this way. And I’ll do so very carefully and slowly so that even you will understand it. If I was the sheriff, I would not have arrested him. If I was on the grand jury, I would not have indicted him. If I was the judge, I would not try him. If I was the D.A., I would not prosecute him. If I was on the trial jury, I would vote to give him a key to the city, a plaque to hang on his wall, and I would send him home to his family. And, Mr. Buckley, if my daughter is ever raped, I hope I have the guts to do what he did.”
“With murder, the victim is gone, and not forced to deal with what happened to her. The family must deal with it, but not the victim. But rape is much worse. The victim has a lifetime of coping, trying to understand, of asking questions, and the worst part, of knowing the rapist is still alive and may someday escape or be released. Every hour of every day, the victim thinks of the rape and asks herself a thousand questions. She relives it, step by step, minute by minute, and it hurts just as bad.
Perhaps the most horrible crime of all is the violent rape of a child. A woman who is raped has a pretty good idea why it happened. Some animal was filled with hatred, anger and violence. But a child? A ten-year-old child? Suppose you’re a parent. Imagine yourself trying to explain to your child why she was raped. Imagine yourself trying to explain why she cannot bear children.”“Make friends with fear, Lucien always said, because it will not go away, and it will destroy you if left uncontrolled.”
“I want to tell you a story. I’m going to ask you all to close your eyes while I tell you the story. I want you to listen to me. I want you to listen to yourselves. Go ahead. Close your eyes, please. This is a story about a little girl walking home from the grocery store one sunny afternoon. I want you to picture this little girl. Suddenly a truck races up. Two men jump out and grab her. They drag her into a nearby field and they tie her up and they rip her clothes from her body. Now they climb on. First one, then the other, raping her, shattering everything innocent and pure with a vicious thrust in a fog of drunken breath and sweat. And when they’re done, after they’ve killed her tiny womb, murdered any chance for her to have children, to have life beyond her own, they decide to use her for target practice. They start throwing full beer cans at her. They throw them so hard that it tears the flesh all the way to her bones. Then they urinate on her. Now comes the hanging. They have a rope. They tie a noose. Imagine the noose going tight around her neck and with a sudden blinding jerk she’s pulled into the air and her feet and legs go kicking. They don’t find the ground. The hanging branch isn’t strong enough. It snaps and she falls back to the earth. So they pick her up, throw her in the back of the truck and drive out to Foggy Creek Bridge. Pitch her over the edge. And she drops some thirty feet down to the creek bottom below. Can you see her? Her raped, beaten, broken body soaked in their urine, soaked in their semen, soaked in her blood, left to die. Can you see her? I want you to picture that little girl. Now imagine she’s white.”
Jake Brigance book 2 – Sycamore Row
“When you have no future, you live in the past, and Lonny would be stuck there forever.”
“First on the scene was Calvin Boggs, a handyman and farm laborer Seth had employed for several years.”
“Ethics are determined by what they catch you doing. If you don’t get caught, then you haven’t violated any ethics.”
“They found Seth Hubbard in the general area where he had promised to be, though not exactly in the condition expected. He was at the end of a rope, six feet off the ground and twisting slightly in the wind.”
“It must be pretty cool being a lawyer,” she said in awe.
“Cool” was not an adjective Jake would use. He was forced to admit to himself that it had been a long time since he viewed his profession as something other than tedious.”“A man shrewd enough and clever enough to amass such a fortune in ten years does not throw together”
“But such a cheap shot from a sibling can never be left alone.”
“He hadn’t hit her in several years, but when you’ve been beaten you never forget it. The bruises go away but the scars remain, deep, hidden, raw. You stay beaten. It takes a real coward to beat a woman.”
“Sistrunk looked angrily at Lettie and said, “I’m allowed to be paid for my time and expenses, plus there is the matter of the loans. When can I expect the money?”
“In due course,” Jake said.
“I want it now.”
“Well, you’re not getting it now.”
“Then I’ll sue.”
“Fine. I’ll defend.”
“And I’ll preside,” Judge Atlee said. “I’ll give you a trial date in about four years.”
Jake Brigance book 3 – A Time for Mercy
“He prayed long and hard for justice and healing, but was a bit light on mercy.”
A voice told him that they, along with Drew, would be a part of his life for years to come.
“Why do so many white people love the death penalty?” Portia asked. “It’s in the water. We grow up with it. We hear it at home, at church, at school, among friends. This is the Bible Belt, Portia, eye for an eye and all that.” “What about the New Testament and Jesus’s sermons on forgiveness?” “It’s not convenient. He also preached love first, tolerance, acceptance, equality. But most Christians I know are quite good at cherry-picking their way through the Holy Scriptures.”
“Murder must be punished, but murder can also be justified.”
“Being fearless, unafraid to take unpopular cases, fighting like hell for the little people who have no one to protect them. When you get the reputation as a lawyer who’ll take on anybody and anything—the government, the corporations, the power structure—then you’ll be in demand. You have to reach a level of confidence, Jake, where you walk into a courtroom thoroughly unintimidated by any judge, any prosecutor, any big-firm defense lawyer, and completely oblivious to what people might say about you.”
“I can’t believe you would represent a killer like that Jake. I thought you were one of us.
xxx
‘Gotta have a lawyer, Helen. You can’t put the boy in the gas chamber if he doesn’t have a lawyer. Surely, you understand.’
xxx
‘…I can’t imagine doing that for a living, representing killers and child rapists and such.’
‘How often do you read the Constitution?’
‘…the Constitution, as interpreted by the Supreme Court, says that a person accused of a serious crime must have a lawyer. And that’s the law of the land.”
Editorial Reviews Jake Brigance (3 book series) by John Grisham
- “Grisham’s pleasure in relating the Byzantine complexities of Clanton (Mississippi) politics is contagious and he tells a good story. . . . An enjoyable book.”—Library Journal
- “Grisham excels!”—Dallas Times Herald
- “Grisham is an absolute master.”—Washington Post
- “Grisham enraptures us.”—Houston Chronicle
- “John Grisham is about as good a storyteller as we’ve got in the United States these days.” —The New York Times Book Review
- “John Grisham is exceptionally good at what he does—indeed, right now in this country, nobody does it better.” —Jonathan Yardley, The Washington Post
- “Grisham is a marvelous storyteller who works readers the way a good trial lawyer works a jury.” —Philadelphia Inquirer
- “John Grisham owns the legal thriller.” —The Denver Post
- “John Grisham is not just popular, he is one of the most popular novelists of our time. He is a craftsman and he writes good stories, engaging characters, and clever plots.” —Seattle Times
- “A legal literary legend.” —USA Today
- “Grisham has returned to the place closest to his heart… The trial is riveting…it’s striking how suspenseful the story is…how much we’re gripped by the small details.”–Sarah Lyall, The New York Times
- “Textbook Grisham—and that’s a compliment…a briskly paced legal drama, with just the right amount of suspense, conflict, plot twists, and courtroom theatrics.”—St. Louis Post-Dispatch
- Editors’ pick: Grisham’s storytelling gifts are on full display in A Time for Mercy as he keeps the reins tight on a complex courtroom thriller.”—Vannessa Cronin, Amazon Editor
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