BOMC fine

First edition as new

First edition fine

After all the tension of the Gamble trial, I expected some kind of resolution but that was not to be. Likewise I expected the Smallwood trial to produce a satisfactory result, but again I was left mystified.

"A Time to Kill" is a riveting story of retribution and justice ... so does the title imply. Replace riveting by frustrating and you know what I felt while reading this doorstopper of a book.

On more than 500 pages, John Grisham delves deep into the schemes and entanglements of a trial in the Southern USA. The premise was so interesting that it was impossible not to pick this book up: A ten-year-old girl is raped by two drunken men, and her father takes the law into his own hands by killing the rapists of his daughter. The major problem in this case: The girl and her father are black, and the two rapists are white. If there is one thing Grisham manages to implement perfectly in his story, then it is the exploration of arguments about why the father should be sentenced to death or declared innocent as a result of the circumstances. The reader always bears in his mind how the jury would be reacting in case the roles were reversed - if two black men had raped a white girl of ten years -, but the fact that acquitting the father of his crime would encourage many other people to commit self-administered justice too also needs to be taken into account.

Might this premise deliver storytelling material for so many pages? Yes, it might. Only ... it didn't. Shortly after Gary Su Jake Brigance assumed his duty of defending his client, the novel drifted away into long-winded, boring and insignificant rambling. Many people claim this story to be very realistic for how the situation for black people in Mississippi during the 1980's was like. I have never lived there, so I have no idea how real it really was, but the way Jake Brigance acted and behaved definitely did not feel realistic to me. Because who doesn't get royally dunk three days before an important trial? Never before have I been that frustrated by a protagonist who behaved like an asshole towards his wife and just about everyone else he encountered, but was still portrayed like the absolute hero. Throw an incapable prosecutor into the game to make Brigance's light shine even brighter, and you have the perfect Grisham version of Fleming's James Bond.

And let's not even address the lack of emotions during the entire novel. You might think that a ten-year-old girl being raped by two drunken men will leave you feeling sorry for her and her family, on the edge of shedding tears? I have to disappoint you, because Grisham's writing deprives every single emotion from every potentially touching scene. You never know how a character feels inside his soul, because Grisham only tells, only allows his reader to guess what his characters might feel at this very moment.

1.5 stars, rounded up due to the interesting premise and the very relevant topic down due to me reconsidering the relevance of the rating system Goodreads suggests (1 star equaling "didn't like it").

Also, just to clarify things a bit: I didn't dislike the story; the plot was extremely interesting to me and had so much potential, must of which was explored vividly in a very tight and well-structured novel. I also really liked the film adaptation; it may not be a masterpiece, but it's a very well-adapted movie. My main source of frustration is the writing, so in the end I guess I just can't get into John Grisham's writing style, even though I would appreciate the contents of his novels. ( )