|
|
Adult Books - Nonfiction - Social Sciences - Law
|  |  | .gif)
The Innocent Man: Murder and Injustice in a Small Town.
Grisham, John (author).
Oct. 2006. 368p. Knopf, hardcover, $28.95 (0-385-51723-8). 345.766.
REVIEW.
First published November 17, 2006 (Booklist Online).
Grisham turns his considerable procedural skills to nonfiction with this examination of a wrongful-conviction case that incarcerated a man on Death Row for 11 years, breaking him in body and spirit. Grisham decided to try his hand at true crime after reading a 2004 New York Times obituary for Ron Williamson, a former Oakland A’s baseball player and Death Row inmate who was one of nearly 200 people exonerated through the efforts of the Innocence Project. Grisham begins with the backstory to the murder of a young cocktail waitress in Ada, Oklahoma, in 1982, moving on to the crime scene and the life of Williamson, who was convicted of the murder. Off to a flying start with the murder itself, the narrative starts to sag with Grisham’s overly long examination of Williamson’s life prior to his arrest. It picks up again with the trial (Grisham’s wheelhouse, of course) and the litany of junk science, jailhouse snitches, and shoddy police work that led to Williamson’s conviction. Unfortunately, the rollercoaster slows once again with Grisham’s lengthy recital of what happened to Williamson in prison and what led to his exoneration. Ironically, the very qualities that make Grisham’s legal thrillers compelling make this nonfiction work often tedious. Painstaking accounts of procedure and delineation of character are better suited to a venue supported by a spine of suspense. Grisham’s plot-driven fiction fans may find themselves more than a little bored by this poorly paced account.— Connie Fletcher
| |
|
| Click here to find more books by this author |
| |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|