The Confession By John Grisham Random House Large Print, 2010, 608 pages ISBN: 978-0739377895 Genre: Suspense, Legal Thriller

Reviewed by Israel Drazin - February 7, 2011

Texas, Grisham tells us, is the State where a person, especially if he is black, or even fractionally black, can be found guilty of murder even without evidence that a person is dead. This is what happens in this well-written, suspenseful tale. A young girl is missing. Her identification papers are found in the river, but not her body. Weeks after she is reported missing, her ex-boyfriend calls the police and tells them about a fellow student who is black. Latter he testifies that he saw the black boy driving near where the girl went missing. The informer is clearly jealous of the boy. The police arrest the boy and mistreat him for fifteen hours until he confesses to what they want him to say. He has a lawyer, an interesting determined man who never gives up on his client. The jury finds the boy guilty. Time has passed and the boy will be executed in a few days.

Then an ex-con who was repeatedly convicted for sex crimes, who is dying of cancer, offers what appears to be a confession to a minister, that he killed the girl and knows where her body is hidden. What can the minister do? Is it against his religion to reveal the information he has even if he can save an innocent man? What can the lawyer do after he has exhausted all appeals?

• The Associate, by John Grisham.
  Kyle McAvoy excelled in law school and his future should have been looking bright, but he had one thing pulling him back. Kyle has a secret, a secret that has fallen into the hands of the wrong people and who are now using it to blackmail him...
  
  
• Ford County: Stories, by John Grisham.
  In his first collection of short stories John Grisham takes us back to Ford County, Mississippi, the setting of his first novel, A Time to Kill.