Product Description

Before The Firm and  The Pelican Brief made him a superstar,  John Grisham wrote this riveting story of  retribution and justice -- at last it's available in a  Doubleday hardcover edition. In this searing courtroom  drama, best-selling author John Grisham probes the  savage depths of racial violence...as he delivers  a compelling tale of uncertain justice in a small  southern town...Clanton, Mississippi.  

The life of a ten-year-old girl is shattered by two  drunken and remorseless young man. The mostly  white town reacts with shock and horror at the inhuman  crime. Until her black father acquires an assault  rifle -- and takes justice into his own outraged  hands.

For ten days, as burning crosses  and the crack of sniper fire spread through the  streets of Clanton, the nation sits spellbound as  young defense attorney Jake Brigance struggles to save  his client's life...and then his own...


From the Hardcover edition.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #276649 in Books
• Published on: 2004-03-15
• Released on: 2004-03-15
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 528 pages

Features

• ISBN13: 9780385338608
• Condition: NEW
• Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
• Click here to view our Condition Guide and Shipping Prices

Amazon.com Review
This addictive tale of a young lawyer defending a black Vietnam war hero who kills the white druggies who raped his child in tiny Clanton, Mississippi, is John Grisham's first novel, and his favorite of his first six. He polished it for three years and every detail shines like pebbles at the bottom of a swift, sunlit stream. Grisham is a born legal storyteller and his dialogue is pitch perfect.

The plot turns with jeweled precision. Carl Lee Hailey gets an M-16 from the Chicago hoodlum he'd saved at Da Nang, wastes the rapists on the courthouse steps, then turns to attorney Jake Brigance, who needs a conspicuous win to boost his career. Folks want to give Carl Lee a second medal, but how can they ignore premeditated execution? The town is split, revealing its social structure. Blacks note that a white man shooting a black rapist would be acquitted; the KKK starts a new Clanton chapter; the NAACP, the ambitious local reverend, a snobby, Harvard-infested big local firm, and others try to outmaneuver Jake and his brilliant, disbarred drunk of an ex-law partner. Jake hits the books and the bottle himself. Crosses burn, people die, crowds chant "Free Carl Lee!" and "Fry Carl Lee!" in the antiphony of America's classical tragedy. Because he's lived in Oxford, Mississippi, Grisham gets compared to Faulkner, but he's really got the lean style and fierce folk moralism of John Steinbeck. --Tim Appelo

From Library Journal
In this lively novel, Grisham explores the uneasy relationship of blacks and whites in the rural South. His treatment is balanced and humane, if not particularly profound, slighting neither blacks nor whites. Life becomes complicated in the backwoods town of Clanton, Mississippi, when a black worker is brought to trial for the murder of the two whites who raped and tortured his young daughter. Everyone gets involved, from Klan to NAACP. Grisham's pleasure in relating the byzantine complexities of Clanton politics is contagious, and he tells a good story. There are touches of humor in the dialogue; the characters are salty and down-to-earth. An enjoyable book, which displays a respect for Mississippi ways and for the contrary people who live there. Recommended.
- David Keymer, SUNY Coll. of Technology, Utica
Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Review
"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.


From the Hardcover edition. -- Review

Customer Reviews

Its about Time!
Finally, A Time to Kill, John Grisham's first novel, is a feature length movie. I just read this book, but I knew it was realeased in 1989. I'm only thirteen, and this was my first Grisham book. In this story, Grisham hits us with a subject that most might not like to discuss: child rape. Ten-year old Tonya Hailey is brutally raped and almost killed by two drunken rednecks; perhaps the saddest and hardest part to get through with the addition of little Tonya's dream of her father running to get her. After this horrid crime is committed, Tonya's father, Carl Lee exacts vengeance on the two rednecks, and kills them. He is put on trial, and lawyer Jake Brigance is introduced to us. He takes Carl Lee's case and must face his hated enemy, Rufus Buckley, in court. The days leading to the trial are filled with KKK threats, riots between blacks and the KKK, and several other chills and spills. Finally, the trial comes and the small town of Clanton, where the trial is held, is occupated by journalists, soldiers, KKK members, and thousands of blacks, as they all wait for the verdict on the edge of their seats..

Your Eyes Will Bleed as You Pour Through the Pages
Gwen Hailey calls her husband Carl Lee at work, tells him their daughter, ten-year-old Tonya is missing. Carl Lee isn't all that worried though, because his wife tends to be, well a little protective. However when he gets home he's met with the news that Tonya has been raped by a pair of redneck types named Billy Ray Cobb and Pete Willard. Tonya had been left for dead and Carl Lee is seeing red. He's African American and does not believe the rapists are going to get what they deserve. Though they're arrested, Carl Lee knows how it goes in the South, so he goes to the courthouse and blows away those young good old boys, then he gets himself a lawyer.

Attorney Jake Brigance takes the case, which gets plenty of media attention right from the get go. It also draws the attention of the Clan, who do their best to intimidate both Jake (they burn a cross on his yard) and the jurors. Carl Lee is looking at the gas chamber if he's convicted and many want it so, however, there are many who believe Carl Lee had been justified. Tension is running high in the Mississippi town of Clanton. Jake's wife is afraid for their daughter Hannah. His secretary is afraid, too. The town doesn't need this, but it's got it.

And you may not need the tension in this book, nor the graphic scene detailing what happened to Tonya, but you should read this book. This is John Grisham's best work, it's his first novel, too. Everything John Grisham writes tops the bestseller lists and they should, but this book, well they need a whole new list for this book. John Grisham puts you in the South at a tense time and paints a picture so true it'll make your eyes bleed as you pour through the pages. He's written a book about a time in the South that the South would love to forget about. We were a different people then, thank the Lord we're changing. We're not their yet, but we're getting there.

Reviewed by Vesta Irene

A fast and entertaining read
"A Time to Kill" is John Grisham's first novel, but unless you read the foreword, it's not readily apparent. His fluid, detailed storytelling is unlike the choppy first attempts of many modern authors. (At times it may seem he pays *too* much attention to details, but after all, he *is* a lawyer.)

In a small town in the Deep South, two redneck hooligans rape and maim a ten-year-old black girl. Enraged, the girl's father, Carl Lee Hailey, takes justice into his own hands, killing the two rapists in a courthouse shooting. He seeks the help of defense lawyer Jake Brigance to save him from the gas chamber. Brigance, a young but sharp lawyer, has to find a way to win an impossible case: a black man is on trial for killing two white men, and his case is being heard by an all-white jury. Adding to the mix are violence between the Ku Klux Klan and the black community, and the fact that, during the shooting, Carl Lee had injured a sheriff's deputy (who later had to have part of his leg amputated).

Throughout the book, the odds stack against Brigance and his client, and the novel will definitely keep you turning the pages. No matter what your personal opinions on the death penalty or vigilante justice are, you won't be disappointed. As Jake's mentor, disbarred lawyer Lucien Wilbanks, says, "If you win this case, justice will prevail, but if you lose it, justice will also prevail."