Before I started this Review, I did something I rarely do - I looked up the book on Amazon and read the 3* reviews there. I am afraid that they all made more or less the same points - and I find myself in agreement with them! Here are some extracts:
O.K., but not wonderful. Boring after Part 1...went downhill with just rubbish of town and school football matches...found it hard work...over long and rather laboured...got a bit tedious...a very good start but the centre of the story wallows in unnecessary material...pedestrian story line told without conviction...lost its way...
Oh dear - but I concur. If I was being just negative, I would say this was a pot boiler by an author who was still writing interesting, free-flowing stories with plenty of realistic characters, but on this occasion hadn't plotted very well. Part One certainly stands up to scrutiny, telling the tale of the gruesome rape and murder of a mother of two very young children by a young man, Danny Padgitt, from a notorious local family engaged in multiple criminal activities. They seemingly have the local law and other officials in their pockets (usually through hefty cash handouts and/or brutal intimidation). This first part takes the story from page 3 to page 248 - half the book's length - and could even stand alone, with an 'unfinished business' ending. Grisham is on top form here and his cast of characters are thoroughly realistic and the tension is slowly built up in a professional way.
If the reader had then skipped to page 353 (Part Three), which deals with Danny Padgitt's release, after less than ten years served (of a 'life' sentence) - thanks to more behind-the-scenes corruption - then we could have puzzled over yet two more murders and reached the satisfying, if slightly unlikely, twist at the end. That would have cut the novel down to a more manageable and tighter story of just under 400 pages. As it is, the massive 504 pages have palled long before the end. For once, it is not the bread in the sandwich, but the 'meat' in the middle which is the problem.
Part Two simply meanders and one is never quite sure of the point of several of the byways. Does Grisham want to focus on the undoubted horror of the near apartheid behaviour of so many whites in the south of the USA in the 1970s? Does he want to analyse the different dogmas and churches that make up 'Protestantism'? Does he want to concentrate on the few characters surrounding the young newspaper proprietor, Joyner William Traynor (soon to be shorted to 'Willie'), and make it also a psychological appraisal of the latter? Frankly the various strands don't really mesh and one could even argue that much of these hundred pages are 'padding'. A pity, as there is the usual Grisham experienced take on the motives of jurors, corruption in high and middle places, and the power of increasing affection (this time between black and white).
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