The Confession

The problem with reading clubs is that occasionally someone suggests a dud and one feels forced to finish the book out of courtesy to the other participants. That's what happened here.

I abhor the death penalty. I approve of Grisham's message 100%, but my goodness this book is repetitive and tedious. Not to mention I felt bruised and battered by being hit over the head constantly by the message. I listened to it and found the FF button to be incredibly useful. The irony was I could fast forward 15 minutes and think I hadn't moved forward at all. The characters are stereotypical cardboard cutouts. Their speeches (they don't talk, they proclaim,) are all cookie-cutter, but the dough gets stale quickly. The book would have been much show more stronger had there been some shades of gray, some ethical tensions. There just are none here.

For example, did the prosecutors and cops set out to kill an innocent man? Of course, not. They were subject to cultural, racial, and political pressures. An examination of the force of those pressures would have made a much more interesting book. And what if there had been no confession? How about an examination of the legal hurdles that prevent uncovering police malfeasance? Or an examination of the Supreme Court's reasoning that innocence is not a defense? (See Connick v Thomson.) To quote Reason Magazine: "Scalia has written in the past that there's nothing in the Constitution to prevent the government from executing an innocent person. He also apparently believes there's no duty for the government to preserve or turn over evidence that would prove a person's innocence. Finally, from Connick we learn he also believes that prosecutors and municipalities shouldn't be held liable to people who are wrongly convicted and imprisoned, either, even if prosecutors knowingly concealed the evidence that would have exonerated them." Now *that* would have made a fascinating book.

I don't like giving negative ratings and usually don't review books I didn't like, but in this case I resent the time spent listening to this; it was like trying to move through quicksand. Be interesting to see what the rest of the group thinks, especially since they are a particularly high-minded literary group.

Do you suppose the moderator got it wrong and it should have been Augustine's Confessions? show less

Anticipating a very long plane trip, I looked for an audiobook that would keep me engaged and interested and would last long enough to get me through the return flight. My thoughts immediately went to a John Grisham novel. I like Grisham for a number of reasons, one being that his books never fail to entertain. I chose The Confession, a title that already resided on my shelf (my husband read it years ago). It was a great choice. Not only did it make the miles literally fly by, but it challenged and expanded my beliefs on capital punishment. A controversial topic to be sure, The Confession examines what it means if an innocent man is sentenced to death. All aspects are included: the media circus, the political climate, the heartbreak of show more the families on both sides, and the spiritual implications of the ultimate punishment. The story is full of twists and turns, the characters are intriguing, and the subject matter handled in a mostly even-handed manner. I think it is safe to say that Grisham writes from an anti-death penalty standpoint, a view that I also hold, though for probably different reasons. Grisham didn’t change my mind about anything, but he did cause me to see the whole process surrounding death penalty cases in a new light. An engrossing read, I recommend The Confession.

The story opens with a confession from career criminal Travis Boyette to a Lutheran pastor. Keith Schroeder doesn’t really know what to do with Travis or his statement that an innocent man is about to be executed in Texas. What follows is a race to bring the confession to light, something that is met with resistance and dismissal from all parties concerned. Travis and Keith are interesting main characters. They cannot be more different — one who has lived a life taking and manipulating, another who earnestly desires to do the right thing. Their unlikely partnership makes for good drama. Grisham’s portrayal of the circus that surrounds the upcoming execution rings true. Media, groupies, politicians, all make the situation bizarre and disturbing. While The Confession is not Christian fiction, three pastors make an appearance and an impact on the story. Keith’s views are, of course, front and center, but Grisham also shares the feelings and thoughts of the pastors of the victim’s family and the accused’s family. The three struggle in varying ways — also very realistic. The Confession is dark, so don’t expect a feel good ending. This book is one to make you think, whichever side of the debate you find yourself on. show less

This is a novel rather than a thriller, and a good one. It is a story about death row: you know who the killer probably is and that the man on death row might be innocent. There is a lawyer, a bit theatrical and sometimes irritating, and a pastor mostly confused, and a governor of Texas and his aides, only thinking about re-election, and the man on death row who lost faith in God. He confessed under pressure and then recanted, but the system trapped him. The families of the victim and of the accused are both well described, and as the story develops, you know the characters so well that you would recognize them in the street. A lovely book about ethics and the vagaries of the soul.

I thought this was one of the best Grisham novels since his early classics like A Time to Kill and The Chamber. Like those, this deals with weighty issues such as racism in the criminal justice system and in American society more generally, and the principles behind and application of the death penalty. The plot concerns the nine year imprisonment of a young black man Donte Drumm, after a confession is forced out of him to having murdered his white girlfriend. The action of the story concerns the confession of the real killer in the days leading up Drumm's execution date and the frantic efforts to save the latter from being executed for a crime he did not commit. It's gripping stuff and a great liberal novel, though perhaps not handled show more with quite the delicacy of those earlier classics. show less

The question of the death penalty is a knotty one for those who think rather than allow themselves to be ruled by emotion. On the one hand, the machinery and process of execution is dehumanizing both to the condemned and to the people performing it. It is certainly not a thing to be celebrated. On the other hand, certain crimes are so repugnant and heinous, certain criminals so vicious and monstrous, that the ultimate penalty seems only appropriate. For the thinking person, a conundrum.

John Grisham's THE CONFESSION confronts us with the worst nightmare of the system - the possibility of executing an innocent - and, in so doing, highlights the serious flaws in the way capital punishment is practiced in the United States. Even if one is show more not an abolitionist, even if one reluctantly believes - as I have - that such an extreme measure should be available for the worst outrages against safety and society, intellectual and moral honesty compels one to admit that such errors can occur, and likely have already done so. If execution is to be available, something must be done to guard against such an occurrence.

The book is not a dry, legal treatise. The reader is brought quickly into the count-down through the eyes of the frantic defense attorney, the families of the murder victim and the condemned man counting down his last days, and the Lutheran minister who must decide if the dying man confronting him in his church office, and claiming to be the real killer, is credible enough to risk his church, his family, and perhaps his freedom to right a faraway wrong. Grisham has long been noted as one of our best story-tellers, and he doesn't fail here.

Read it, and then ponder its issues. show less

“The prosecution’s theory of guilt had been based in part on the desperate hope that one day, someone, somewhere would find Nicole’s body”

A murderer confesses to a minister. A wrongly convicted man is headed for the death chamber. Can justice prevail?

Grisham is pounding on his social justice soapbox loudly with this one: we hit capital punishment, race relations and church bureaucracy. He’s back to his Street Lawyer activism by writing (I think, anyway; it might all be a ploy to sell more copies). And yet there is a sad despondency to it all; nothing really changes. Without wanting to have spoilers, it doesn’t turn out as well as one might hope, and the epilogue suggests that nothing will ever really change.

Grisham is back show more to writing memorable characters and in The Confession he has two “good guys” worth talking about (my other favourite Grishams had one very strong lead – The Rainmaker, The Street Lawyer, The Testament): Robbie Flak and Keith Schroeder. Robbie is brilliantly combative and tender at once; it is clear that the family of the wrongly accused are very close to his heart, but I wouldn’t want to be a politician in his cross-hairs. Schroeder is the opposite – a softly spoken Kansas church minister with a litany of home commitments, who finds his calling in helping a self-confessed murderer and rapist cross state borders to stop misguided justice’s wheels.

As in The Testament there is no shortage to our comic cast of ridicule; Reena Yarber is one of the truest, least self-aware mountains of hypocrisy I’ve ever come across in literature. That she is prepared to exhaust her family and friends to fuel the spiral of her attention-seeking grief makes her eventual mockery on television cruelly suitable. And as for Boyette – no attempts to redeem him from his sleazy, filthy existence are made, he just trundles along being as disgusting as a cloud of noxious cigarette smoke.

The pace drags a little in the build-up: will Boyette go south or won’t he? The race riots are over-built (although still powerful) and there’s too much time spent in the governor’s office. Otherwise, the plot works well – and I was surprised that the book reached a fully fleshed-out conclusion well after the climax, an unfortunately rare occurrence in thrillers.

If you felt Grisham lost his way with Playing for Pizza and The Painted House, he’s back on the road with this one. show less

Very good read, tons of suspense and sympathy for the innocent, and frustration with the guilty and the system that upholds a wrongful conviction and death penalty. Perhaps a bit too black and white, with the good guys and the bad guys clearly separated and not too many shades of grey. A good summer thriller for sure. Will probably re-read, even though now I know how it will turn out.