Verdict: 5 Stars
Fans of the author’s suspenseful legal thrillers will love this title that revisits one of the settings that made John Grisham a household name. Almost twenty-five years after the release of A Time to Kill, Grisham takes us back to Ford County and back into the fray of legal dramas.
From the book’s description, “Seth Hubbard is a wealthy man dying of lung cancer. He trusts no one. Before he hangs himself from a sycamore tree, Hubbard leaves a new, handwritten will. It is an act that drags his adult children, his black maid, and Jake into a conflict as riveting and dramatic as the murder trial that made Brigance one of Ford County’s most notorious citizens, just three years earlier.”
Critics of the book have argued that this one is “typical Grisham” and that it follows the plot lines that we’ve gotten really, really used to from him. Having said that, there are a couple of surprises in the book, as well as some unanswered questions from the first round that the author springs on us. The courtroom drama and masterful depictions of well-researched settings more than make up for any predictability in the plot, as does his handling of a fairly common plot line of an elderly dying man leaving his entire fortune to a random fringe character, in this case, his maid.
Sycamore Row is available now in print, audiobook, and ebook.
Mercy Pilkington is a Senior Editor for Good e-Reader. She is also the CEO and founder of a hybrid publishing and consulting company.