I picked up A Time To Kill by John Grisham somewhere. It's among the books I don't even know where I got them, so it was a while ago. My coworker picked up the third book of that series. I'm about to read the first one to find out if I want to borrow the second. Let's get to it.
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| Courtesy of Amazon.com |
This is a crime novel with all the cheer of Law and Order SVU. It opens with the rape and assault of a ten year old black girl, the dialogue riddled with racism. Keeping that in mind, this is not a cozy, tame book. Please remember that when you open any book written by Grisham. He's not a tame author, nor is he writing cozy stuff. It's a heinous crime in progress in the opening scene.
That isn't all, though. The girl survives, after being dumped, and the father of the child takes matters into his own hands (even after the sheriff swiftly finds the culprits bragging in a bar while drunk). The court has one hearing and the child's father already tells one of our main characters (soon to be his lawyer) what he wants to do. The sheriff doesn't take the threat seriously, thinking that the man is just temporarily thinking rashly. It turns out the child's father meant it. The trial we focus on is the trial of the man who shot his daughter's attackers while they were leaving court.
Overall Thoughts
Somehow, this is the year I pick up nearly nothing tame and end up finding the darkest books ever written. How fun... At any rate, the book opens with a couple of guys raping, tormenting, and trying to kill a ten year old black girl. Please note that you'll find racism in their dialogue. I would not put this book in the hands of a child. Not only that, but the KKK come back into Clanton (the setting is Clanton, Mississippi) and start terrorizing Jake Brigance (the lawyer we follow) and anyone connected to him. The three trigger warnings I'll state are rape, racism, and KKK violence.
Now that we have the trigger warnings out there for all to see, let's get into characters. Jake Brigance, Carl Lee's Lawyer, is the man we follow around in the storyline. Carl Lee is the father who gunned down his daughter's attackers in the courthouse. He's black and shot down two white men. One of the gunned men's family has KKK connections, and we get a lot of KKK violence from that plot point alone. They restart a Clanton chapter of the KKK because of Carl Lee's act of vengeance. Halfway through the book we aren't even at the trial. The character interactions are not unrealistic, nor are they always doom and gloom. People interact like people. We also see the town's dynamic clearly through all the characters and their actions. Jake is associated with slightly shady people and you still find yourself rooting for him. He's a likable, but flawed character who is trying his best to defend a man who dug himself a deep hole.
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| Courtesy of rottentomatoes.com |
The town itself is a character. You have the racism of the south, but find the black community elects most of the officials. The sheriff, Ozzie, is a black man. He runs a tight ship and tends to bend some rules for those he likes, or when he needs to get his man (like when he uses a nightstick to persuade a KKK man to reveal his partner's location). The black community is a big part of why Jake wants a black jury, because they are more willing to let Carl Lee go free. He doesn't get a black jury. He thinks a white jury would put Carl Lee away. The rape of Carl Lee's daughter is a major factor in all this. Many think his act was reasonable in these circumstances. Others are connected to the dead men and literally awakened the Clanton KKK chapter to deal with the injustice, not really caring what these two men had done to this child. It's a hard case to defend. We follow mostly the legal side of things.
Oh, and it's a movie, too.
Some Scenes To Be Aware Of
There are two or three scenes that can be considered graphic. They are not at Stephen King level, to be clear, but they are not pleasant to read. The 'thanks for that image, I hate it' scenes are what I call them. They are toward the tail end of the book and the beginning, the tail end being when the KKK has really gotten upset. The opening scenes of the book that detail the rape of the ten year old are graphic, but I think I covered that already. You can count that as scene number three. The opening and closing of the book are both intense.
One of the later scenes starts with the young law student/law clerk going out to her car and getting picked up on her drive home - by the KKK. She gets tied to a post, stripped, and left in the field (where the mole in the KKK takes her down and calls the sheriff). They ripped out and cut her hair, as well cutting off her clothes.
The next one reveals the mole in the KKK (Mickey Mouse, he calls himself). He is sitting with the klan and they beat him, drag him to probably the same field, whip him until his back is crimson, and set him on fire with gasoline. They throw a match on his gasoline-soaked, limp body and leave him to burn to death.
As for the beginning of the book, be aware of the rape scene. Not only do they rape her as her legs are tied apart, but they pee on her, throw beer cans at her, pour beer on her, and try to lynch her. It's not pleasant to read. I wouldn't call this a light book. The racism and violence in this book are not something you need a child to read. Parents should say no to this one, at least until the age of 18. After 18 it'll be fine, depending on the person. Also, the N word is used so often I got used to seeing it in dialogue.
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