A washed-up, mentally unstable former pro baseball player ends up framed for an Oklahoma woman's murder in John Grisham's hair-raising nonfiction work The Innocent Man.
I have always liked Grisham but hate to admit that a lot of his books were starting to run together in my mind. But this non-fiction work you almost couldn't make up, populated with blind and drunk lawyers, bungling judges, treacherous jailhouse snitches, bullying cops, dream confessions, last-minute death-row reprieves, and more, in a case that spans decades.
What's more, Grisham sets forth and least two other botched cases from the same time period and geographical area during the course of the story that are almost as chilling as the main story.
Long but absolutely compelling from start to finish, The Innocent Man actually made me rethink some of my beliefs about the death penalty.
I listened to the bulk of this on audio book during a long drive back and forth to Chicago, and the time passed quickly.
I have always liked Grisham but hate to admit that a lot of his books were starting to run together in my mind. But this non-fiction work you almost couldn't make up, populated with blind and drunk lawyers, bungling judges, treacherous jailhouse snitches, bullying cops, dream confessions, last-minute death-row reprieves, and more, in a case that spans decades.
What's more, Grisham sets forth and least two other botched cases from the same time period and geographical area during the course of the story that are almost as chilling as the main story.
Long but absolutely compelling from start to finish, The Innocent Man actually made me rethink some of my beliefs about the death penalty.
I listened to the bulk of this on audio book during a long drive back and forth to Chicago, and the time passed quickly.
John Grisham has managed to write a book that reads like one of his novels and still tells this amazing and true story about "justice" in a small town. Anyone who thinks that justice is always blind is in for a rude awakening. This truth is stranger than fiction story is a warning to all of us about what can happen when our desire to blame someone overwhelms our need to always seek the truth no matter how long that may take.
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