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A Time to Kill: A Novel
 
 

A Time to Kill: A Novel (Mass Market Paperback)

by John Grisham (Author)
4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (297 customer reviews)
List Price: CDN$ 11.99
Price: CDN$ 10.79 & eligible for FREE Super Saver Shipping on orders over CDN$ 39. Details
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A Time to Kill: A Novel + The Rainmaker + The Innocent Man
Total List Price: CDN$ 35.97
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Product Description

From Amazon.com

This addictive tale of a young lawyer defending a black Vietnam war hero who kills the white druggies who raped his child in tiny Clanton, Mississippi, is John Grisham's first novel, and his favorite of his first six. He polished it for three years and every detail shines like pebbles at the bottom of a swift, sunlit stream. Grisham is a born legal storyteller and his dialogue is pitch perfect.

The plot turns with jeweled precision. Carl Lee Hailey gets an M-16 from the Chicago hoodlum he'd saved at Da Nang, wastes the rapists on the courthouse steps, then turns to attorney Jake Brigance, who needs a conspicuous win to boost his career. Folks want to give Carl Lee a second medal, but how can they ignore premeditated execution? The town is split, revealing its social structure. Blacks note that a white man shooting a black rapist would be acquitted; the KKK starts a new Clanton chapter; the NAACP, the ambitious local reverend, a snobby, Harvard-infested big local firm, and others try to outmaneuver Jake and his brilliant, disbarred drunk of an ex-law partner. Jake hits the books and the bottle himself. Crosses burn, people die, crowds chant "Free Carl Lee!" and "Fry Carl Lee!" in the antiphony of America's classical tragedy. Because he's lived in Oxford, Mississippi, Grisham gets compared to Faulkner, but he's really got the lean style and fierce folk moralism of John Steinbeck. --Tim Appelo --This text refers to an alternate Mass Market Paperback edition.



From Library Journal

In this lively novel, Grisham explores the uneasy relationship of blacks and whites in the rural South. His treatment is balanced and humane, if not particularly profound, slighting neither blacks nor whites. Life becomes complicated in the backwoods town of Clanton, Mississippi, when a black worker is brought to trial for the murder of the two whites who raped and tortured his young daughter. Everyone gets involved, from Klan to NAACP. Grisham's pleasure in relating the byzantine complexities of Clanton politics is contagious, and he tells a good story. There are touches of humor in the dialogue; the characters are salty and down-to-earth. An enjoyable book, which displays a respect for Mississippi ways and for the contrary people who live there. Recommended.
- David Keymer, SUNY Coll. of Technology, Utica
Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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A Time to Kill: A Novel
73% buy the item featured on this page:
A Time to Kill: A Novel 4.6 out of 5 stars (297)
CDN$ 10.79
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The Rainmaker 4.3 out of 5 stars (303)
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The Partner 3.9 out of 5 stars (794)
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Customer Reviews

297 Reviews
5 star:
 (219)
4 star:
 (56)
3 star:
 (10)
2 star:
 (6)
1 star:
 (6)
 
 
 
 
 
Average Customer Review
4.6 out of 5 stars (297 customer reviews)
 
 
 
 
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Most helpful customer reviews

 
3.0 out of 5 stars A Visceral Look at Small-Town Justice in an Imaginary South, Jul 29 2008

A Time to Kill is not for those with weak stomachs. In his first novel, John Grisham holds nothing back in describing man's inhumanity to man. If you like reading about violence that would make those with weak stomachs miss a meal, this is your book.

The premise of the book is a thought-provoking one: How would a Southern small town treat a crime by an African-American perpetrated with malice aforethought that it would have permitted a white southerner to get away with?

The book's best qualities are exploring the roots of racial prejudice.

For those who like legal thrillers where there's some action, this is far more than your usual courtroom drama. It comes closer to the kind of taut threat that permeated To Kill a Mockingbird. The only difference is that Grisham conjures up an intersection in time between the old and new South that never happened.

I found that the book was predictable in its over-the-top treatment of what would have made for good drama. But the extreme situations weakened the plot by making it seem unlikely. I suspect it was a writing method used to be sure that those who didn't know about the old South would appreciate the delicate nature of the emotions involved.

If you want to get a sense of how far Grisham has come, read this book and then The Client. Fortunately, Grisham learned how to back off from writing over the top and has become an excellent novelist.

You'll keep turning the pages of this book. I doubt if very many people put it down unfinished.
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5.0 out of 5 stars Grisham thriller, Jul 27 2004
By A Customer
This review is from: A Time to Kill (Paperback)
In A TIME TO KILL, the most inhumane crimes have been committed in a southern Mississippi town. This town is full of racism, but the community is 85% African-American. The Klu Klux Klan is rising from the south once more, and they terrorize homes and other people's lives. A young black girls father takes justice into his own hands by killing the two repulsing men whom brutally raped his ten-year-old daughter. Sound formulaic? It's not. In any other author's hands it would be a disaster, but in the paws of the masterful Grisham it turns to pure gold. Also would recommend another great book I've just come across (though everyone else seems to have heard of it) which is called THE BARK OF THE DOGWOOD. Extremely unusual, funny, graphic, and shocking.
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4.0 out of 5 stars Good legal drama but not Grisham's best., Jun 12 2004
By ShyGuy1966 (Irmo, SC USA) - See all my reviews
This review is from: A Time to Kill (Hardcover)
The story in this first novel from John Grisham has enough clichés that the reader knows very early the book's conclusion. Despite appearing at first to be Matlock-type story, there's enough action in both the main and side plots to keep the pages turning. The author clearly knows the rural South. One complaint about this and all Grisham's book is when the plot is over the ends very suddenly. The rush to end leaves several side-plots unresolved or poorly resolved.
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Most recent customer reviews

5.0 out of 5 stars Wow!
This is not just a book, it is a spectacle to behold. I was literally biting my nails as this book reached its climax, as Clanton, Mississppi, a small unsuspecting southern town... Read more
Published on May 26 2004 by Chad Rickman

5.0 out of 5 stars One Of Grisham's Best Books Yet!!!!!!
This is one of the most interesting novels I have ever read of John Grisham's. The drama inside the courtroom, which he is famous for, was absolutely exquisite. Read more
Published on May 12 2004 by Brennan

3.0 out of 5 stars a time to kill
A Time To Kill is set in Mississippi during racist times. The book a time to kill tells a story about a young black girl that gets rapped by two white guys. Read more
Published on May 11 2004 by mahde

4.0 out of 5 stars A Time to Kill
Is race a main factor in our courts today? It all depends who you ask. Some people would say race is irrelevant. Read more
Published on May 11 2004 by Dominik

1.0 out of 5 stars A dissatisfied reader!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I recently finished reading a book titled A Time to Kill, and I have to say it was one of the most boring books that I ever had the misfortune of reading. Read more
Published on May 11 2004

5.0 out of 5 stars A Time to Kill Should Be Viewed as an American Classic
A reasonable case could be made that John Grisham's A Time to Kill is the single most important work of fiction written in the past twenty-five years. Read more
Published on May 10 2004 by Stacey Cochran. Visit staceyco...

5.0 out of 5 stars Amazing work............
This may be the best book I have ever read, and that's saying a lot. Grisham is a master of the courtroom drama, and he proves that with this book. Read more
Published on April 29 2004

4.0 out of 5 stars A GREAT NOVEL!!!
The classic John Grisham novel, A Time to Kill, is a transfixing story of the violent effects of racism in the deep south. Read more
Published on April 25 2004

1.0 out of 5 stars John Grisham's view of the races: whites are evil
It's sad a talented storyteller (though not writer) like Grisham should choose to make his fame on a book that pretty much labels white people the devils (and blacks, angels)... Read more
Published on April 13 2004

5.0 out of 5 stars My Favorite Grisham book
I have read a lot of Grisham books and this one is by far my fave. It is also one of the few book-turned-movie of Grisham's that was not ruined by Hollywood. Read more
Published on April 1 2004 by a reader

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