Book: The Confession by John Grisham

I like most of John Grisham's writing and this latest book was not a disappointment.

A Lutheran minister, living in Topeka, Kansas, becomes involved with a convicted, but paroled felon, who now lives in a halfway house near his church and who confesses to the minister that he is the actual murderer of a high-school girl, not the black man who is scheduled to be executed in a small Texas town for the murder after nine years on death row. The man tells the minister that he has a malignant brain tumor and wants to rectify this injustice before he dies. He appears very ill, suffers severe headaches and convulsions and his story checks out, for the most part. So the minister reluctantly gets involved. Meanwhile, the lawyer for the convicted man is frantically doing everything he can to prevent the execution. These are the bare outlines of this story. Along the way, Grisham also describes the history of the death penalty in Texas. He weaves into this tale the stories of the families of the accused and the victim, descriptions of the politicians' involvements in the appeal processes and also of the collusions between law officers and lawyers years ago which led to the murder conviction and which were mostly based on lies and fabrications and illegal procedures.

So, this is another story based on the inequities between whites and blacks in a small Southern town. It is also a serious look at the institution of the death penalty and a sobering, interesting glimpse into the mind of a psychopath.