Book #78–The Confession

Getting back to the more passionate, emotional books, Grisham does a fantastic job. I grabbed The Confession since it was on the front page, and I didn’t see anything else that day. This brought me back to the “A Time to Kill” feeling, where you are outraged and powerless to do anything about the injustices in the story. In this case, during a death penalty case.

A boy was wrongly suspected, arrested, convicted, and is about to be killed in Texas. His lawyer is a passionate liberal trying desperately to think of something, but coming to grips with the idea that he will lose this boy. A paroled felon goes to a church in Kansas and confesses to the priest for the killing, but drags it out until a race occurs to the Texas town the day of the execution.

They’re too late.

However that’s only half the book. The other goes into the efforts to clear the boy’s name, and it casts the death penalty in a suspect light. The governor of Texas, the police, the town even has to come to grips with the idea that they killed the wrong man.

It’s a fantastic read, and highly recommended.