Time to Kill by John Grisham (books on tape)

I just finished listening to Time to Kill by John Grisham. It was the first book that Grisham wrote and was republished after his book The Firm hit the best-seller list.

The book revolves around the trial of a father who kills two boys who raped his daughter. That is the sanitized summary. The daughter was only 10. The boys were two scum drug dealers. The father was black. Oh, and the two boys were white. And the setting is Mississippi.

The story begins with a graphic description of a very incomprehensible, very brutal scene as it unfolds and a little girl’s life is destroyed. The culprits were caught by the police and, while being transported after a court appearance, the father of the little girl ambushes the boys and kills them.

The story then unfolds with many moral dilemmas. Should a father be convicted for taking the law into his own hands? What will the prosecutor do to win a case? Especially when he wants the publicity that will help him run for governor. What will defense lawyers do to represent the father in this ‘Trial of the Century’? What if the boy had been black and the father white? Many more questions like these make you realize our system is not perfect and neither are the people that make up our society. Whether for good or bad we all have choices we need to make and I pray I never face such moral dilemmas in real life.