The Confession

The Confession, by John Grisham.

Grisham is a lawyer, and an author of law and legal thrillers.  But this book reads like it's written by a pastor, who happens to write legal thrillers.  In other words, it's very convincingly real.

It's 1998 Texas and an innocent man is going to die by lethal injection.  And the real rapist and murderer is the only person who can save him. So the killer goes to a Lutheran pastor in Topeka, Kansas, to confess.

USA Today says, "Packed with tension, legal roadblocks and shocking revelations".  Maybe, but I found it packed with believable facts, frighteningly real issues, and found myself tricked numerous times into thinking I was reading today's news instead of fiction. Little, if anything, has changed in Texas courts since this book came out.  And that means this story has occurred, and will again, somewhere, without a brave pastor coming forward to make the necessary difference.

I can say I enjoyed it, because it was fiction.  I can also say I am bothered by it, since it deals with a real situation in every death penalty state.  What happens when we kill an innocent? I think John Grisham wanted to bother all of us.

-Ken