Nice plot, fast paced, smooth writing although I felt the ending of the book was quite abrupt and rushed up but nevertheless an enjoyable read. It isn't John Grisham best work but still a great read.

A savage rape of single-mother Rhoda Kassellaw, is perpetrated in sight and sound of her young children, before she is murdered by, rapist-murderer Danny Padgitt, a reckless and callous younger member of the Padgitt crime-family, the dominant and most powerful organised crime gang in the vicinity of the Rhoda's town of residence in Mississippi. This is the story of a young man from the North taking over the town's newspaper who got involved with the murder case, alongside African-American matriarch Miss Callie, and their slow and exhaustive search for justice for Rhoda and her children.

Seriously, John Grisham, where have you been all my reading life? The decades long pursuit of real justice against uncompromising forces is set against the loud backdrop of racial integration, the Viet Nam War, the emergence of drug cartels and mostly through the eyes of a northern state born publisher running a newspaper in the South. The northern lens makes it even more interesting because Grisham uses it to talk about a lot of the good things about the South from the community spirit and the food through to the their religious fervour and pride of their States. This is all on top of a superb story, that this time looks how organised crime so easily manipulates a criminal justice system where capitalism and greed is king. Yet another 8 out of 12 Four Star jam by Grisham for me.

2024 read

I think this was the most overrated - over written- over plotted of any Grisham I have ever read. To be fair, I didn't read it in a book. I listened to it on tape. I liked Willie Traynor, the protagonist and Narrator, who bought a small town weekly newspaper and became a 23 year old celebrity in the town. There was a murder, of course - a vionent murder. Danny Padgit, the murderer was not sentenced to death. So far so good - but the title is "The Last Juror" We expect that the jurors will die one-by-one at the hands of this dreadful killer. But before we get there, we take numerous side trips - it took me so long to finish it that I forget some of them. Most significant was the relationship he built with Miss Callie over lunch every Thursday. He wrote articles on her seven children who had all graduated from college with PhD's and were all professors. Not too shabby for a black family in the 70's in Mississippi. He sidetracked to more than was necessary about racism in Mississippi in the 70's. He sidetracked about Viet Nam. Knowing the history of the Padgetts did nothing at all to further the plot. And in much the same way that Willie Traynor got tired of writing and sold the paper, I expect Grisham got tired of writing and before we got to the last juror, Miss Callie died. End of story. Huge disappointment.

This was the first John Grisham book that I ever read. A friend recommended Sycamore Row and sent me an e-book to read. E-books are not my favorite format. I prefer paper. But I liked what I managed to read of the book. Here was an author who knew how to keep the reader's interest.

My interest was piqued and I tried to look for the book in my library. I failed to find it, but I wanted to read something else by John Grisham and picked up The Last Juror.

As it turned out, the plot of the novel was indeed eyeball grabbing. Willie Traynor, a young college graduate, armed with a degree in Journalism, arrives in the fictional town of Clanton, Ford County, Mississippi, in 1970s, to work for a newspaper that barely prints a thousand copies. Soon after his arrival, the owner is served a bankruptcy notice.

The paper is up for sale, dirt cheap. Traynor has a rich grandmother who is prevailed upon to invest in the paper, and Willie finds himself, at 23 years of age, owner of a small-town newspaper. He works himself to the bone trying to turn a losing proposition to a winning one. He is unexpectedly handed a publicity bonanza when a young woman is found murdered in the outskirts of the town. Her murderer, Danny, nabbed almost immediately, is scion of the infamous Padgitt clan.

A trial starts and the whole town suddenly sees the need to buy Willie's newspaper. He fills the paper with not always impartial, often opinionated news, but he makes it a selling proposition once more. In the process, he falls in love with the small town and its people, and he fights hard to maintain the integrity of the town.

This novel is practically un-put-down-able. I neglected my housework in a bid to turn the next page and find out what happened next.

Like the hero of the novel, John Grisham also lived in deep south in a small town. He was a trial lawyer though, not a newspaperman. After working for years as a successful lawyer, John Grisham took to writing novels. His career graph (professional to author) reminded me of another favorite author of mine, A.J. Cronin, who became a successful author after years of being a medical practitioner.

It is not surprising that several of John Grisham's books have been turned into Hollywood films. His plots are imaginative and rich, his characters are dramatic and memorable and his story-telling is powerful and evocative.

Although I read this book quite a few years ago I still remember how much I enjoyed reading it.
I had read only a couple of Grisham's books up to that point and this one sounded like one that I would really enjoy reading and I did. I finished it over a weekend up at the cabin in just a few sittings.

There didn't seem to be as much courtroom time and I enjoyed the focus on the story in the small southern town. I really enjoyed the first person narrative. The characters are quite believable and the descriptions are vivid and understandable especially for the time in small town America. I also loved all of the descriptions of Miss Callie's wonderful cooking.

I got to know the town, its people, and the trauma they all experienced during the murder trial and the turmoil after the early release of a murderer. Grisham kept my interest throughout the book.
All in all a good story with interesting and well-developed characters.

I thought that this book was good

n  Not really a courtroom drama or legal thriller; instead this novel focuses on the media in a small town in Mississippi.n

Willie Traynor takes over the local newspaper in Clanton, Mississippi. The previous owner had apparently gone mad and was basically filling his pages with nothing but obituaries. The residents had grown used to this and adapted to it to the extent that they wanted nothing more than for their personal obituary to feature prominently. Traynor slowly sets about changing the culture, and the big trial of Danny Padgitt for the rape and murder of a local woman could be just the thing.

Meanwhile Traynor develops a friendship with an elderly black lady, Miss Callie (this was in the 1970's when segregation had just been outlawed.)

The whole town turns out for the trial as Traynor waits anxiously for the details in order to sell newspapers. Then, Miss Callie is suddenly summonsed for Jury service, but she doesn't really believe in the death penalty. What will be the repercussions of the decisions made in the Jury room and will those outside ever find out exactly what was said and by whom?

This novel features the usual small town characters with the gossip and rumour mill working steadily. Unusually, the story is told from the point of view of the journalist Traynor who has his finger in a lot of pies. I ended up feeling a bit indifferent about the character who comes across as a bit wishy washy and blah. Just kindof mooching through life without much passion. He uses his newspapers to write some left-wing articles (about the Vietnam war) but the reader is left with a feeling that he doesn't really feel as strongly about the subjects as he is attempting to convey through his writing.

Similar to the last Grisham book I read, I kept waiting for the drama or excitement but it didn't really happen and I felt let down by the ending. That said, I still had to read to the end which is Grisham's specialty; drawing a reader in so they have to know what happens.

There is sexual content in this and it is a little too graphic whilst dealing with the rape. There are also a fair few deaths which aren't as graphic. There is some bad language but mostly border-line words and it isn't frequent.

There is a lot of religious content in this book. Once again, though, Grisham misses the mark as he deals with the substance of Christianity. His character at one point surveys all of the local churches and describes each service. He tries to write a summary of what most Christians believe, but it's inadequate. Grisham seems to view Christianity as a pick and choose religion rather than the only way to have our sins forgiven and find peace with God. I can't quite make out what his beliefs are from his books as sometimes he seems to mock religious figures and other times he holds them up as examples....

The moral of this story is that success (even becoming a millionaire) and reaching the top of your game/career won't satisfy you. There is a restlessness that is within each one of us that keeps us striving towards certain goals. When we fulfill one goal, we look for another and another and another....it's the same with material possessions. We are always searching for the next best thing. The truth is that these things won't ever satisfy us because only God can bring us contentment here on earth and it doesn't come through worldly success or material wealth.

Grisham fans might like this but there are better ones.

Check out my John Grisham Shelf!

4.5 ⭐️ rounded up. Not your typical Grisham legal thriller. It dragged a little bit around the middle, but overall a great read.

Interesting and different from most other Grisham books. This one is about Clanton before A Time to Kill or Sycamore Row. It's set in the 1960s and 70s when the country is in the throes of Viet Nam, no Black person has ever seerved on a jury in Ford County, and intergrtion comes to the schools.

Lucian and Harry Rex are practicing attorneys, with the despised aLucian defending a young murderer who is a member of an outcast, outlaw clan living nearby, but not interacting with the townspeople.

Told from POV of a young man who buys the local paper almost as a lark, the story progresses as he builds circulation well, keeping on the former editor whose sole task these days is writing obits. The book covers 7 or 8 years in the life of the town, especially focussing on the relationship between the editor and Miss Callie, a black woman with many children, all but one of whom have PhD degrees. She is the first Black off eoter gender to serve on any jury and sat for the trial of said murderer.

When the murderer is released after 7-8 years, members of the jury start being murdered.

Good read, nicely read, and an escellent portrayal of that time in our nation.

Listenedd to again in 2024 and upped this to 5 stars. We lived in Mississippi for a year in 1962 and it was shocking to an upstate New Yorker like me. "Colored" drinking fountains and all that sort of thing. Persons of color could only buy clothes in stores, not try them on. We were later in Montgomery during the bus boycott. And when our younger son made freinds with a classmate of color, neighbors called their children indoors when his friend visited. (They had discovered a backway to each other's home through the woods.) All was so, well, foreign to me. And now we have great-grandchildren of color.

Wow, I am shocked at the amount of people who actually liked this book. Every two years or so I get the urge to read a Grisham novel in the hopes that it will be as good as his early work, but the last three books I've read have been a big disappointment (The Last Juror, The Broker and The King of Torts)

It's fine if Grisham wants to write something different than a legal thriller, but I wish his publishers didn't advertise this book as if it was. I really didn't want to read a book about small town southern life, especially a particularly boring southern town, but that is pretty much what this book is about. I found the characters to be uninteresting, particularly the main character. I thought it absolutely ridiculous that he sold the paper at the end so he could stay in the town and basically do nothing. The part where he went around to all the various churches in the area did nothing for the plot and it didn't even change his character mentally or spiritually. What was the point????

I did like how he brought back characters from A Time to Kill as Harry Rex is a great character, though I was disappointed about Lucien Wilbanks. I thought maybe the Padgitt case was the case that got him disbarred....but nope. He was disbarred for some other case that they barely mentioned. You would have thought that would be big news in that town, but apparently not. In A Time to Kill he was portrayed as a brilliant legal mind, but in this book he was a stereotypical defense attorney that did not impress me with his legal skills.

I thought the ending was ridiculous, both finding out who was killing the jurors and when Callie died....just awful. I kept reading this book hoping that the end would be worth it, but now I wish I had just stopped reading after page 100. I am referring to The Last Juror as the The Last Grisham Novel (that I will ever read).

Το κυρίως θέμα του βιβλίου θα μπορούσε να εξαντληθεί σε μια νουβέλα 100 σελ. ο συγγραφέας επέλεξε όμως να γράψει ένα βιβλίο 400+ σελίδων. Για να γίνει αυτό εφικτό θίγει διάφορα θέματα και εκθέτει την άποψη του. Θέματα όπως την θανατική ποινή, το πόσο δίκαια είναι τα χρόνια όταν πρόκειται για ισόβια κάθειρξη, την διαφθορά στην αστυνομία, στα δικαστήρια και στα σωφρονιστικά ιδρύματα, τον ρατσισμό και τις φυλετικές διακρίσεις, το πόλεμο στο Βιετνάμ, την ελευθερία του λόγου στον τύπο, το εκλογικό σύστημα στον Νότο και τις διαφορές ανάμεσα στα θρησκευτικά δόγματα. Μέσα στον σχολιασμό βέβαια για όλα αυτά χάνεται η ουσία. Αισθάνθηκα κλείνοντας το βιβλίο σαν να είδα μια φωτογραφία όπου αντί ο άνθρωπος που φωτογραφίζεται να είναι μπροστά κ πίσω του να βλέπω το φόντο ενός όμορφου τοπίου, αυτός κάθεται στο βάθος και χάνεται μέσα σε αυτό.
Παρόλα αυτά διάβασα το βιβλίο ευχάριστα και εύκολα αν και δεν με τραβούσε όταν το άφηνα, δεν αγωνιούσα να το ξαναπιάσω. Αν και το κυρίως θέμα του ήταν πολύ επίκαιρο και όλα τα υπόλοιπα που καταπιανόταν ενδιαφέροντα, η υπόθεση δεν είχε διακυμάνσεις. Σίγουρα όμως θα διαβάσω και άλλα βιβλία του συγγραφέα.

Book Review - Readers looking for a courtroom thriller should look elsewhere. “The Last Juror” has little to do with juries or the courtroom. It has much to do with a broad canvas painting of a small, Southern town during the 1970s. This painting begins with a terrible crime and arrest. Predictably it moves on to the trial and the selection of the jury. But somewhere along the way, the story takes a casual turn. Instead of the tight, focused story Grisham's fans have come to expect, Grisham changes course and spends more time on the background of the town and its characters. The unusual tale that follows is good and in my opinion, one of Grisham’s best pieces of writing. Readers, who want courtroom action, would be much better off passing on this book and looking for other Grisham favorites. This book was a pleasure to read though. Another Grisham ‘must read.