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THE CONFESSION
by John Grisham
Arrow Books, May 2011
457 pages
7.99 GBP
ISBN: 0099545799


Buy in the UK | Buy in Canada

The Reverend Keith Schroeder of St Mark's, Topeka, Kansas has a visitor who tells him a story he finds difficult to believe. He says that a young black man by the name of Donté Drumm is shortly to be executed in Texas for the rape and murder of a young girl nine years previously - a crime of which he was completely innocent. The visitor, Travis Boyette, explains that he is currently in the process of being re-released into society, having served a jail sentence in Kansas. Following further questioning, he admits that it was he who killed and raped the girl and claims he knows where she is buried. It is not entirely clear what his motives are but he says that he is trying to find some sort of peace by making this confession. He also says that he has cancer and is not expected to live long. He eventually agrees to Schroeder's suggestion that they both travel to Slone, Texas, the town in which the murder took place, and tell their story there.

On the way they make arrangements with Donté's lawyer, Robbie Flak, to work together in an effort to save his client. Flak has never ceased his efforts on behalf of Donté and is convinced that he was convicted as a result of a conspiracy involving the police, the prosecuting attorney and, perhaps, even the judge.

Grisham has a noticeable tendency to paint very much in black and white. We are asked to believe, for example, that the prosecuting attorney and the judge were having an affair at the time of the trial. Similarly the detective in charge of the case seems to have been less interested in solving the case than in pinning it on Donté – apparently because he was black. The mother of the dead girl, who enjoyed the publicity that the murder of her daughter brought her, is initially described rather neatly as having 'embraced victimhood' but after that her vanity, personal ambition and her desire to see Donté put to death render her nothing more than a caricature. The same excess is demonstrated in the description of the television presenter who is keen to use the circumstances of the execution to make a sensational programme.

The questions raised by the plot are whether Schroeder and Boyette can get to Slone in time and, if they do, whether they can persuade the authorities to postpone the execution until Boyette's story is investigated. Although Robbie Flak and his legal team spare no efforts to find and utilize legal technicalities, there is enough doubt about the outcome to keep the reader involved as the excitement mounts and the story speeds along in the way we have come to expect in a Grisham novel.

§ Arnold Taylor is a retired Examinations Board Officer, amateur writer and even more amateur bridge player.

Reviewed by Arnold Taylor, July 2011

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Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)


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