A Novel Look At... A Time To Kill by John Grisham

No one in my house actually knows where the book came from. I don’t remember buying it, my mum and dad sure as hell didn’t buy it (they don’t really care for reading) and my sisters have very little interest in courtroom thrillers. And yet, a copy of John Grisham’s A Time to Kill has sat on my book shelf, unread, for nearly a decade (I don’t mean that offensively, Mr. Grisham, I’m just very weary about picking up a phantom novel). But, finding myself without a book to read, I finally decided to take it off the shelf and dive in.

            The whole thing begins in a not so cheery way; a rape scene where two rednecks have their way with a ten year old black girl. As a young Brit, I won’t pretend to be an expert on the subject of race in the Deep South during the 1980s, but I’m fairly positive the two rednecks have crossed the line. From there, we follow young but mostly polished lawyer, Jake Brigance, in his quest to defend the father of little girl who has since gone all ‘bang-bang, you’re dead!’ on the men that raped his daughter.

            The novel does a lot, refusing to shy away from big issues such as racism, rape and murder, which was pretty brave considering this was Grisham’s first published piece. However, despite having a lot of material to work with, many situations that were played out just seemed pointless. The introduction of case-chasing lawyer, Marsharfsky, added a fair few pages of filler, Jake’s newly hired female law clerk felt thrown in as a red herring that led to a very disappointing departure and the whole scenario revolving around Jake’s house troubles had no pay off because we never found out his wife’s reaction.

            That being said, I can’t deny the fact that the courtroom drama had me hooked like a highly hookable fish (yes, I do write all my own similes. Aren’t they amazing!). Jake’s cockiness is never overpowering and you can’t help but like the guy especially when paired with his rival, the district attorney, Rufus Buckley. Reading the battle of words between them was exciting, the way they take sly jabs at each other and try to get one up over the other makes for a compelling read. You’ll find your reading pace increases towards the end in desperation to see whether Jake manages to keep his client out of the gas chamber or not.

           There’s a lot going on in this novel and at times it did feel like a bit of a slog to read through. If you do plan on reading A Time to Kill, mentally prepare yourself for a long and heavy ride with a few time-consuming pit stops along the way.