The Last Juror - Softcover

Grisham, John

3.94

99,229 ratings by Goodreads

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0099457156 ISBN 13: 9780099457152

Publisher: Arrow, 2004

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Never make an enemy of a murderer.

In 1970, the Ford County Times went bankrupt - and to the surprise and dismay of many, was bought by 23-year-old college dropout Willie Traynor. The paper's future was grim, until a young mother was brutally raped and murdered by a member of the notorious Padgitt family. Traynor reported all the gruesome details, and his newspaper prospered.

The murderer, Danny Padgitt, was tried before a packed courtroom in Clanton, Mississippi. The trial came to a dramatic end when the defendant threatened revenge against the jurors if they convicted him. Despite his threats, they found him guilty, and he was sentenced to life in prison.

But nine years later, his influential family got him paroled.

And then, one by one, the jurors who'd convicted him were murdered...

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Review:

Like many of John Grisham's better books, The Last Juror is at its best when evoking the past--Mississippi in the early 1970s--and less effective when constructing the bait-and-switch plotting with which he makes a pointed argument about the law. When Danny Padgitt (one of a family of bootleggers that is effectively a large criminal conspiracy) is convicted of rape and murder, the jury cannot agree on the death penalty--and life sentences in this time and place are liable to be as little as nine years. Padgitt threatens the jury and when, once he is out, the jurors who heard his case start being executed, conclusions are there to be jumped to...

Grisham is arguing that justice has to be seen to be done, rather than specifically for the death penalty or even life-means-life sentencing. Though his case is loaded, it is never entirely sentimentalised partly because these events are seen through the eyes of one of his most engaging narrators--a young northern-newspaper editor out to make a name and a fortune for himself, but also committed to the truth and a saintly African-American matriarch who serves on the Padgitt jury. This is a deeply populist book, but never a stupid one. --Roz Kaveney

Review:

"The Last Juror sees Grisham at the absolute peak of his form – page-turning urgency" (Mail on Sunday)

"Masterful – when Grisham gets in the courtroom he lets rip, drawing scenes so real they're not just alive, they're pulsating – quality thriller writing" (Daily Mirror)

"The Last Juror does not need to coast on its author's megapopularity. It's a reminder of how the Grisham juggernaut began" (New York Times)

"Wholly engrossing – Grisham's story-telling knack has not deserted him; and the hint that something more serious is at stake than the solution of a crime gives the narrative an extra depth" (Evening Standard)

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