The new protagonists, the housekeeper and her bright and ambitious ex-soldier daughter, are totally believable and their deep fund of common decency merely highlights the greed and selfishness of their opponents. Most of the major players from the first book reappear, a little older, a little more set in their ways, some a little more drunken, some showing surprising humanity, as the story races to a conclusion.

A tense and dramatic court case follows, exposing modern prejudices and forcing Ford County to face its sordid and tortured past. A covering letter appoints Jake his attorney and when the man's worth is assessed in the multi-millions, the vultures from families on both sides and the legal profession gather to battle over the fortune. Burnt out of his home by the white supremacists, he still feels their threat, carries a pistol in his briefcase and welcomes the regular checks on his wife and young daughter by his friends in the sheriff’s department.Ī reclusive and wealthy local businessman commits suicide to avoid the agonies of terminal cancer – and leaves a handwritten will, cutting out his own family and leaving his entire estate to his black housekeeper. Little has changed in Ford County in the three years since lawyer Jake Brigance took on the hopeless case of Carl Lee Hailey and fought the ingrained racial prejudice and the power of the Ku Klux Klan. But in this stunning sequel to the book which made his name, Grisham is right back at the top with what is probably his most convincing and compelling work yet. I was among many critics who thought that Grisham was fraying at the edges, that his later work was lacking the insight and the humanity which made him so successful, that fame and wealth had blunted that driving force for social justice which set him apart from the rest. And America’s favourite author triumphantly proves the doubters wrong. They say never go back – it can never be the same, but almost 25 years after the publication of A Time To Kill, John Grisham is back where it all started for him in the courtroom of the small Mississippi town of Clanton.

Sycamore row review