 Book Reviews
with Robin Osborne
The Last Juror
By John Grisham
Century $49.95
 Grisham's 17th novel bore the words 'The new bestseller' on its front cover before the book even hit the market and now, sure enough, it sits atop most Australian sales lists, thanks to its taut, credible plot and pacey script, illuminated by the bizarre social conditions of Ford County, Mississippi, in the 1970s.
It's a place where whites don't mix with blacks and laws are made - and broken - by people who should be behind bars, not claiming to uphold justice.
Enter Willie Traynor, a 23-year-old 'northerner' with a history of academic failure in journalism resulting from his preference for serial affairs and late nights on the booze. Armed with a $50,000 cheque from a wealthy aunt, he arrives in Clanton, a town where 'it takes at least three generations to be accepted,' buys the Ford County Times, a small circulation weekly, and plots how to reverse its fortunes.
The young editor has no need to exaggerate local crime stories because a 28-year old widow and mother-of-two, Rhoda Kessellaw, is sexually assaulted and then brutally stabbed after sighting an intruder.
Preceded by her children, Rhoda staggers to a neighbour's house, naked and covered in blood, collapsing on their lawn and managing to whisper, before breathing her last, the name of her assailant: 'It was Danny Padgitt.'
The Padgitts, as Grisham details wittily, are an extended family of crooks who have traded illicit liquor, guns and marijuana from their isolated land for generations.
Now, things have gone awry, for the drunken Danny crashed his car fleeing the rape and murder scene and was arrested on the spot.
The case spells rescue for the Ford County Times, which covers the arrest and trial in lurid detail. When a bomb is found in its offices, the circulation grows even faster, with Willie Tranton revelling in huge headlines and colourful copy.
Grisham's character-sets include a well educated black family, the Ruffins, all of whose children except a black sheep have gained doctorates, and the colourful lawyers and jurors on both sides of the Padgitt trial.
It gives nothing away to reveal that as he faces a guilty verdict, Padgitt screams at the jurors, 'You convict me and I'll get every damned one of you.' They start dying, and you realise there is more to his vengeance than meets the eye - as one might expect from this master of legal thrillers.
- Thanks to Book Warehouse, Keen Street, Lismore for supporting this column.
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