Once again Jake is thrown into a controversial trial that some want badly to turn into a good ol' race war.

On a fine Sunday morning, a local businessman, Seth Hubbard, is found hanging from a tree on his property the next day, Brigance receives a letter from the man appointing him the executor of his will, a handwritten document that cuts out the man's family and leaves his enormous fortune to.the maid. But he did, and the storied reputation he earned as a progressive lawyer of integrity earned him the job that begins in Sycamore Road. No one expected Brigance to triumph, not in a town like Clanton where racial tensions ran deep. Sycamore Row picks up only two years after the climax of A Time to Kill, in which Jake Brigance defended a black father who meted out shotgun justice to two white hooligans who beat and raped his young daughter. A direct sequel to his first novel, and building off many others, Sycamore Row is good work, a legal thriller and a story of restoration and forgiveness. Sycamore Row, however, is a return to the Grisham of yore set in his fictional Clanton, Mississippi, the site of many of his better novels. I have been less than impressed with John Grisham’s books in recent years The Racketeer made me suspect Grisham or his publishers were merely milking the success of his name.

Sycamore road by john grisham