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The Last Juror by John Grisham

Posted on 18 July 2007

ReviewColumn's rating :
4 stars

The Last Juror While not everybody would have heard of him, John Grisham has been credited as one of the best authors of our time. In fact, he holds the title for authoring a number one bestselling novel of the year for seven consecutive years, from 1994 to 2000. He is famous for various novels such as The Firm and The Rainmaker, both of which have been adapted into major motion picture films in 1993 and 1997 respectively. While The Last Juror isn't exactly one of his more famous works, it is still worthy of being a John Grisham novel.

The story is set in the fictional town of Clanton and is told in first-person by one Willie Traynor. The 23 year old college-dropout reporter buys over the town newspaper for 50 thousand dollars after the previous owner almost causes it to go bankrupt. Not too long after, a widow is killed by a member of the notorious Padgitt family who has been committing all sorts of legal acts on their own island all along. When the murder occurs, society screams for justice. Danny Padgitt, the murderer, is indeed put on trial in front of a jury and is found guilty but is only sentenced to life imprisonment, but not without any fireworks. Danny threatens to "get everyone of you" if they found him guilty, however despite the threat on their lives, the jury still convicts him and justice is served. Soon, everyone forgets about the murder as life moves on.

However, just 9 years after the trial, Danny is released on parole...............

I won't delve any further into the story, since going any deeper would reveal too much. The short summary there should get many people excited about the thriller. However, it's not as good as it seems. The trial doesn't occur till about halfway into the book, and he isn't released till very late in the book. So what's in between? Random stuff. Seriously, everything in between the trial and his release is almost completely irrelevant to the overall plot. However, that doesn't make it uninteresting at all. It talks of a town going through many changes, racial dis-segregation and other paradigm shifts in society, all from the point of view of the editor of the town's newspaper who is a really engaging narrator. Still, while the content is pretty enjoyable, I found it quite irritating to go through all these pages when they did not seem to have any link with the overall story at all. Regardless, I plowed through the entire book, hoping that everything would fall into place at the end. Alas I was disappointed when none of that turned out to be important.

I was gravely disappointed with the book prior to reading about his release. However, EVERYTHING changed when I reached the ending. I cannot stress how good the twist and the ending was. My jaw had literally dropped in awe when there was a dramatic twist as I had not expected it one bit. The ending of the book really saved the entire thing from being a complete disaster and I really wish I could reveal what the twist was here, but that would just spoil it for everyone else.

All in all, The Last Juror has a pretty decent introduction that will arouse some interest in the reader, but it gets really boring in the middle. Many people will definitely give up on the book halfway through as it would seem to be heading nowhere. However, once you reach the ending, I'm almost a hundred percent sure that everyone won't regret reading the book. A really good thriller and one of Grisham's best plots.

In short,
Pros: Great plot and storyline with an unexpected turn of events at the end
Cons: The middle portion of the book might be quite boring of some

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