A Time to Kill

I have read only one other legal thriller. From the ‘experience' of having read two of them, I don't really get why legal thrillers are called ‘thrillers'. I guess the supposedly thrilling element here is about who trumps the other in bribing, cheating, manipulating and finding loopholes in the law, when the truth is staring at us from the beginning. It's more drama than a thriller.


I felt this book to be very American. Probably because 12 random people were deciding, whether a man should live or die. I've seen this peculiar American thing called jury trials in all those TV shows and movies (and especially loved 12 Angry Men) and have always wondered, why there was no such system in India. (obviously I'm not very politically inclined). And then I read this.

Everything that could go wrong with a jury trial happens in here. Truth and justice loses all meaning.

The spine of the book is racial tension which holds it together pretty well. And I had not much idea about the KKK before this.

I like a good revenge story; like John Wick, when the one good thing in his life is taken, out he goes all in. Carl Lee has kids and family. Why did he have to do this? Then again, I'm no black man in a white majority county. I'm no father and I have no kids. What do I know? Still, I hated how Carl Lee took Jake for granted. Maybe his character was inspired by some doofus Grisham himself had to represent. And I don't know if this ‘braless women who come onto married men' and appreciation for ‘women who don't wear pants', is a 90s thing of the South or a fantasy of the author's.

Anyway, even though it drags us around with boring details and squabbles between lawyers, it gets more horrifying and gut wrenching in the last 100 pages. I wouldn't recommend it for everyone. It was...okay.

I originally read this yarn more than 25 years ago on a three week tour of Italy with my family. It was my parent's tripod a lifetime. Much to their chagrin, I brought this book along with me and whenever we weren't on the go I had my head down reading this book.

I decided to re-visit the book this summer after watching an interview of John Grisham hosted by Adriana Trigiani. I wasn't disappointed, but I'm affected by the story and it's characters differently today then I was 25 years ago. Mr. Grisham's story about the racial divide in Mississippi seemed so far away from my life and I felt superior to those characters that were our right racists. Today, I don't feel quite so superior and I recognize the need for me to step up and take action.