The Confession by John Grisham Book Review

Written by Teresa Pitcher: 01-December-2010

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An innocent man is about to be executed.

Only a guilty man can save him.

For every innocent man sent to prison, there's a guilty one left on the outside. He doesn't understand how the police and prosecutors got the wrong man, and he certainly doesn't care. He just can't believe his good luck.

Time passes and he realises that the mistake will not be corrected: the authorities believe in their case and are determined to get a conviction. He may even watch the trial of the person wrongly accused of his crime. He's relieved when the verdict is guilty. He laughs when the police and prosecutors congratulate themselves. He's content to allow an innocent person to go to prison, to serve hard time, even to be executed. Travis Boyette is such a man...

In 1998, in the small East Texas city of Sloan, he abducted, raped, and strangled a popular high school cheerleader. He buried her body so that it would never be found, then watched in amazement as police and prosecutors arrested and convicted Donté Drumm, a local football star, and marched him off to death row.
Now 9 years have passed.

Travis has just been paroled in Kansas for a different crime; Donté is 4 days away from his execution. Travis suffers from an inoperable brain tumor. For the first time in his miserable life, he decides to do what's right and confess.
But how can a guilty man convince lawyers, judges, and politicians that they're about to execute an innocent man?

Review by Teresa Pitcher

This book really held my interest in the beginning but then it began to drag and I eventually lost interest and didn't finish it.

I like the writers' style (as in the way he uses sentences and words - he knows how to put it together in an entertaining way), but this story was too long and too detailed for the basic story that it was and I feel it may have been stretched out in order to make a wide book. I read 3/4 of it.