A Time to Kill

Title: A Time to Kill

Author: John Grisham

Genre: Legal Thriller

Time: 9.5 hours

2015 Book Challenge: a book on the bottom of your to-read list

Since 4^th grade, I have always wanted to be a lawyer.  I then took a perfect pre-law course in college and even took the entrance exams for law schools.  So given this background, you’d think I’d have devoured all John Grisham novels by now.  But for some reason, me and a John Grisham novel have not crossed paths ‘till I decided to use this for the a popular author’s first book challenge.

Once in a while, I come across fellow book lovers who would swear by John Grisham but I never got enough curiosity to check it out myself even with all his books turned into blockbuster movies.  But when a challenge called for a popularauthor’s first book challenge, I was a bit of a loss since I’ve read quite a lot of popular authors and with my tendency read all books by an author I’d like, I’d have most likely read their first books already.  I remembered about Grisham novels and got some of his books and set it aside for that challenge but ended up reading Gillian Flynn’s Sharp Objects instead.  So I put this in my “to-read” list and promptly forgot about it when I was trying to finish all challenges.. until I got to this one.  So here we are.

The book started to move along nicely until it got to the trial part.  Watching a lot of Law & Order episodes, I was used to the trial part being summarized and getting the verdict in the same length as we got to the “crime investigation” part.  So it was an adjustment to read a more elaborate version of the trial—from the preparation part to the actual trial and finally the jury deliberation and verdict.  I’m not really surprised, I already knew that John Grisham specializes in judicial thrillers.  After I got used to the pace, it was actually quite gripping and very informative.  I enjoyed it so much that it didn’t matter to me what the verdict would be.  The journey was enough that I didn’t really mind so much the destination.

I know this was written like 20 years ago but the themes are still very relevant today with all the “Black Lives Matter” and “All Lives Matter” issues we have today.  It kinda makes me wonder who among those making so much noise are like the ones in the book who are only in it for the money and fame.