Tuesday’s Titles – I must confess…I did not love The Confession!

The Confession

I get so excited for new John Grisham books, but I am slightly disappointed with The Confession.  The fictional story is about a young black man who is given the death penalty for the murder of a white girl which he did not commit.  Set in Sloane Arkansas, Grisham dives into the racial motives for the conviction, the need for a prosecutor to get a conviction in a high profile murder case,  and the motives of the police when they need to get their man.  These are familiar themes in Grisham’s stories and usually they work together to create great page turning novels that makes you stop and think at the same time.

I think in The Confession the author got so caught up with his need to convince the world that the death penalty is wrong that he ends up lecturing to his reader, and parts of the novel read like a law text book.  I found myself plodding along at times rather than engaging with each new page.  I’m also still wondering why the real killer confesses, other than that Grisham needs that to happen to prove the wrong guy received the death penalty.  There is actually no clear motive other than he says he doesn’t want to see the wrong guy killed for his crime.  A career rapist and murderer has a guilty conscience?  Grisham is trying too hard to make a story fit into the moral view that he wants to propel.

So in The Confession I found myself in love for the first twenty pages, back in school and reading a textbook for much of the middle, engaged with the family of the man who is wrongly put to death, disturbed by the back story of the real killer and then kind of annoyed at the end when Grisham wraps things up.  Is it worth reading, yes, but just don’t expect The Pelican Brief or The Firm from it.  This book feels more contrived than other Grisham novels and in the end he might have been better off writing editorials for the newspapers than trying to make a novel around his position.

It is interesting that I just finished this book and in real life the news is filled with the story of the death penalty sentence handed down in Connecticut.  I think if our legal system actually worked, most people would feel a life sentence is a just punishment, even more so than the death penalty.  However, as long as parole is granted and we see felons let out, and going back and committing more crimes, then people won’t psychologically feel safe, and therefore will support a death penalty that is a guarantee that person won’t harm anyone ever again.

Want to weigh in on The Confession?  There is a lively debate on the Amazon reviews section and so far it has a three and half star rating.    Check it out here.

Advertisement