The Last Juror by John Grisham

The Last Juror by John Grisham
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

There are a couple kinds of revisionist history. There's the kind found in Song of the South or Gone With the Wind with happy darkies singing and picking crops while Miss Scarlet throws a fit. There is also the kind found here, in The Last Juror, where an author writes himself into history and always comes down on the good side. Blacks good, whites bad. All whites that is except for the author.
I hadn't read Grisham for a while but I wanted something light so I picked up this book. I found the whole thing misleading. The back of the book describes a man sentenced to a crime who gets out to exact revenge. That doesn't happen until the 84% mark in the book! Talk about spoilers! In between there's a lengthy, too lengthy, Tuesdays with Morrie section where there hero learns the true plight of blacks in the South is paying more for groceries. There's also lengthy sections on the Vietnam war, Lord knows what else. It all started to run together for me as I rolled my eyes at yet another side tangent. Oh, 80 churches visited. Just a lot that has nothing to do with moving the book forward.
The characterizations were good but the book was so light it was like swiss cheese with holes in the page. There was no moral ambiguity here, the people were either angel good or low down bad. And in the end it's proven vigilante justice and guns will solve all problems. Hurrah.


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