Great story and absolutely worth a read!

I’ve read several of John Grisham’s books and this was perhaps my least favourite - part 1 was brilliant, but parts 2 and 3 let it down.

Daca ar fi fost sa judec aceasta carte dupa 50 de pagini as fi zis ca e o carte proasta. Daca as fi judecat-o dupa mijlocul ei as fi zis ca e decenta. Dupa ce i-am citit finalul pot spune ca e excelenta.

Ramane misterul celor 2 minciuni: al titlului si al sinopsisului de pe spate, care sunt infirmate flagrant. Evident, niste minciuni intentionate.

This is the first Grisham book I've ever read, and it is really not a court drama, despite the implications of the title. In 1970, 23-year-old Willie Traynor moves to the small city of Clanton, Mississippi, and buys the local newspaper, which has recently gone bankrupt. Soon after this, a local woman is raped and murdered by Danny Padgitt, son of the "redneck mafia" that is the Padgitt family. The story vaguely meanders around the trial and subsequent fallout over the next several years, but mostly it's about Willie's life in Clanton and the people he meets. There are a lot of scenes and even minor characters thrown in just for color. The ending was mostly predictable, with the only major "twist" feeling like it had been plucked from thin air. It wasn't a bad book - the characters were definitely believable and often entertaining - but from the very beginning I wondered how Grisham would manage to find enough plot to fill the 350 pages. Unfortunately, he really didn't. In the end, if you enjoy reading about smalltown Southern life, you'll like this. If you're looking for an action-packed legal thriller, you probably want to look elsewhere.

Ok I just recently came back to my love of literature since my Harry Potter craze & I immediately stumble upon this book from my cousin.

I approached it with an Open mind & one heart. I flipped the pages each day and with each depth i fell in Love with the Plot setting, the theme and overall the characters.

This young man starting a new journey which soon becomes a blood bath and crazy law stuff that I must say i quite enjoyed it. Also the Author Tackles Race and Discrimination so candidly.


So I ain't no expert on Literature but if you like to be transported back-in-time this books is for you

Much more than just a legal thriller - very fine writing!

Mississippi's Ford County local weekly newspaper hangs on the edge of bankruptcy and Willie Traynor, a rather shiftless ne'er do well college dropout, hears from a chum that a publication like the Ford County Times would be a veritable license to print money if it were properly run. With the help of a $50,000 loan from his doting grandmother, Willie assumes the ownership of the newspaper and begins the process of pulling the newspaper from its deep hole. Things are definitely looking up and readership is given an enormous boost with his lurid, sensational coverage of the trial of local bad boy, Danny Padgitt, for the brutal rape and murder of Rhoda Kasselaw, a reclusive young widow. With the assistance of a shocking in court threat of revenge against the members of the jury if he is convicted, Padgitt is sent to prison for life and Ford County resumes the role of a sleepy-eyed southern town living its languid 1970 life.

As I read the entire middle half of the book, I found it quite easy to forget that Grisham made his name as an author writing legal thrillers. Grisham treats us to an extended commentary on life in a typical southern community during the decade of the 70s. He deals with racial prejudice, hatred, fear and the legal issues of bussing and de-segregation in a calm, straight up and quite fearless almost documentary approach. His very human characters of Calia and Esau Ruffin, a black couple that live on the wrong side of the tracks, allow us to see and acknowledge the historical wrongs and injustices that were visited upon the black population in the Deep South without standing up on an annoying soap box and yelling about it. The stereotypical white old boy's network is represented by the notorious Padgitt family, Lucien Willbanks, their extraordinarily slimy lawyer and Mackey Don Coley, the sheriff who has made a career of ignoring the Padgitt family's wrongdoings. Nixon's politics, the struggles the US faced attempting to extricate itself from the Vietnam debacle, conscientious objectors and returning veterans all make an appearance. Clearly, this fine piece of writing was also a metaphor for the time that Padgitt was in prison. Padgitt and the brutal murder simply vanish from the collective psyche of Ford County. As we read this story, we are SUPPOSED to forget about him just as the community did until we are shocked to discover he has been released on parole after only nine years and the jurors who sent him to prison begin to die.

At the risk of sounding like a literary snob, I'd like to suggest that Grisham has moved up a very large notch. With THE LAST JUROR, he has proven his ability to write compelling human drama that doesn't rely upon simple chills and thrills to make the reader turn the pages. I believe this is the finest effort from an author who already has a pretty commendable body of work to his credit!

Paul Weiss

My personal favorite Grisham book of all time.

This was my first John Grisham novel and I’m not sure what I expected. The novel was well written and easy to read but certainly didn’t captivate me enough. The plot is set over several years and doesn’t provide any remarkable plot twist. However, the characters were interesting and the time period/place it’s set add to the story.

I thought I had read all of Grisham’s books to date but this was apparently one I had missed. Great story and humour!

4 Stars. Great but it dragged a little. I'm a long way from Mississippi but Grisham really has a way of bringing to life characters and the challenges of their daily lives in the deep south of the US. Through the eyes of 23-year-old Willy Traynor, the new owner of Clanton's weekly paper which he purchased for a song, we follow the 1970s story of the rape and murder of a young mother, the conviction of her accused killer, Danny Padgitt, and the terrible repercussions of his threat during the trial that, if the jury convicted him, he would come back after his release and kill them all. Yet the story does not revolve around Traynor or Padgitt. It's Callie Ruffin, a black woman from the other side of the tracks in town who is the centre of things. A great cook, she beckons young Willy every Thursday for lunch like a magnet draws a nickel. She's raised all but one of her 8 children to PhD level, and persuades Willy to take up religion. Callie becomes the first black person on a jury in Ford County, and it's her experience on the Padgitt jury and its aftermath which fascinates. Miss Callie is the last juror. Enjoy; I did. (Se2024)

A stand alone semi-courtroom drama published 2004.

Probably deserves 4 stars.

The story of my life, not really sure to make of this. It was not what I expected but I unexpectedly enjoyed it.
As the title would suggest there was a courtroom involved but it consumed only about twenty percent of the whole. The rest was a retrospective look at Ford County in the seventies through the eyes of the local newspaper.
When it becomes obvious that the local newspaper will soon be going into receivership a young colt journalist, who is an employee of the papers, decided that he would make an offer to buy the paper.
Now the proud new owner with all the ambition and energy that only the young can engender he sets forth to make the paper a success.
To achieve this he, not only, reports on all and every newsworthy, or otherwise, story but he searches out any local citizen who might have a story worth telling. Before long the big event in most peoples lives becomes the next edition of the local newspaper.

For the most part the news is pretty mundane to say the least but when a young widow with two children is brutally raped and murdered the paper and the community goes into overdrive.

The man accused of the murder belongs to a family much hated by the local community for a bunch of thieving cutthroats. The case that was presented to the jury was so cut and dried that not only was a guilty verdict expected but the death penalty was also expected. When the jury gave the guilty as charged verdict but didn’t qualify that with the death penalty the locals were dumbstruck.
For the death penalty to be give all jurors have to agree, it takes just one juror to disagree to prevent the death penalty from being carried out.

This was an interesting look at life in the southern states of America in the seventies.
The division of the races. The Vietnam war. The attitudes to crime and punishment.
Not what I expected but very readable for all that.

Very good, a bit long and certain chapters felt pointless but overall very enjoyable