Grisham prosecutes the death penalty in 'The Confession'
By Carol Memmott, USA TODAY
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ABOUT THE BOOK
In 2006, John Grisham was compelled to publish his first work of non-fiction, The Innocent Man, a haunting account of a small-town baseball hero railroaded onto death row for a rape and murder he did not commit.
In his new legal thriller, The Confession, Grisham again dips into his strongly held anti-death-penalty convictions to tell the story of the fictional Donté Drumm, who at 19 is found guilty of murdering a high school cheerleader in Slone, Texas.
But Drumm had nothing to do with her death. His trial made a mockery of the justice system. He has been on death row for eight years — and that's where The Confession begins.
On a Monday afternoon in Topeka, just four days before Drumm's execution, Travis Boyette, the real killer, shares the truth with Keith Schroeder, pastor of St. Mark's Lutheran Church.
What follows is three days of last-minute acts of desperation as Schroeder and Drumm's attorney fight to clear Drumm's name. It's a tale packed with tension, legal roadblocks and shocking revelations.
If Grisham's dialogue and narrative sometimes cross the line between storytelling and proselytizing about the evils of the death penalty, he compensates through meaty character portrayals and an unpredictable end to Drumm's story.
The reprehensible Boyette is never viewed as a savior. The girl's grieving mother thrives in the limelight. The politicos who support the death penalty are more obsessed with their careers than truth. Drumm's family never gives up hope.
Most pointedly, Grisham's descriptions of Drumm's deterioration as he sits in his windowless cell are heartbreaking.
"Death row is a nightmare for serial killers and ax murderers," Grisham writes. "For an innocent man, it's a life of mental torture that the human spirit is not equipped to survive."
One can't be sure how welcome Grisham will be in Texas in the wake of this novel. He rails non-stop about what he calls "Texas-style" justice: "When Texas wants to kill somebody, they're gonna do it. ... It's an assembly line around here, can't nobody stop it."
Death penalty proponents might not rush to buy this book. It's a no-apologies, flagrantly one-sided story that would only annoy the heck out of them.
But Grisham is the master of the legal thriller. Readers who share his views as well as those sitting on the fence will find much to love and lament in the tragic story of Donté Drumm.
http://www.usatoday.com/life/books/reviews/2010-10-26-grishamrev26_ST_N.htm?csp=Books
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