"Great storytelling"

By 1970 the Ford County Times went bankrupt sped up by local boycotts when the owning family began adding obits of Negroes to the newspaper. Former cub reporter Willie Traynor, who went north for college, drops out of school, takes over the troubled paper from the aging Caudle family to the dismay of most of the white populace of the Mississippi County.

Willie's paper gets a circulation boost when the police arrest Danny Padget for the vicious rape murder of Rhoda Kasellaw, a widow mother of two young children, who identified the culprit before she died. Being a spoiled member of a prominent family, Danny threatens the jurors if they convict him, which they surprisingly do as the evidence besides the deathbed statement of the victim is overwhelming. Less than a decade later, Danny is freed and the jurors are being killed off one by one. Willie, who admired the first black juror in the county's history, Miss Callie Ruffin, risks his life to keep her safe, but retribution is coming.

The insightful look at little things that add up to major social relationships in 1970s Mississippi during a time of revolutionary change is John Grisham at his best. Those minor items like an obituary for a deceased black person or the first black juror brings the era into stark reality. However, when the tale twists into a serial killer storyline, that subplot is very exciting, but also takes the focus away from the social lens of change and upheaval. Still John Grisham entertains his fans with a terse suspense tale that is quite as superb as A TIME TO KILL, thus pleasing his vast readership.

Harriet Klausner

Reviewed by Harriet Klausner
Posted March 25, 2004

Summary

In 1970, one of Mississippi's more colorful weekly newspapers, The Ford County Times, went bankrupt. To the surprise and dismay of many, ownership was assumed by a 23 year-old college dropout, named Willie Traynor. The future of the paper looked grim until a young mother was brutally raped and murdered by a member of the notorious Padgitt family. Willie Traynor reported all the gruesome details, and his newspaper began to prosper.

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

But in Mississippi in 1970, "life" didn't necessarily mean "life," and nine years later Danny Padgitt managed to get himself paroled. He returned to Ford County, and the retribution began.