A 16 year old boy, Drew Gamble, and his sister, Kiera, are huddled in their room, terrified. Their mother's (Josie's) boyfriend-a cop-Stuart, has come home drunk and starts beating Josie. They believe she is dead when they creep from their room. Drew picks up Stuart's gun and kills Stuart.
Jake Brigance is appointed to be the attorney defending Drew.
The case follows Jake as he becomes involved in the Gamble family and their personal situation. The legal system seems to be against Jake because the child killed a cop.
The case brings out legal tactics and personal feelings. An emotional story.
I liked it, but I thought it was a bit long. ( )

Time for Mercy by John Grisham

BIBLIOGRAPHIC DETAILS:
Print: COPYRIGHT: 10/13/2020; PUBLISHER: Doubleday; ISBN 978-0385545969; PAGES 480; Unabridged

Digital: COPYRIGHT: 2020; PUBLISHER: Belfry Holdings, Inc.; ISBN 978-0385545976; 471 pages; Unabridged

*Audio: COPYRIGHT: 10/13/2020; ISBN: 9780593168561; PUBLISHER: Books on Tape; DURATION: 20:07:24; PARTS: 18; File Size: 575788 KB; Unabridged; PARTS:18

Feature Film or tv: No

SERIES:
Jake Brigance Series, Book 3

CHARACTERS: (Not comprehensive)
Jake Brigance – Protagonist, defense lawyer
Carla Brigance – Jake’s wife
Hanna Brigance – Jake’s 8-year-old daughter
Harry Rex Vonner– Lawyer and Jake’s friend
Portia Lang – Lettie’s daughter, Jake’s secretary
Ozzie Walls – Ford County Sheriff
Lucien Wilbanks – disbarred lawyer – owner of the building Jake’s office is in.
Omar Noose – Judge
Josie Gamble – Abused mother of two teenagers
Drew Gamble - 16-year-old son of Josie
Keira Gamble – 14 year old daughter of Josie
Stuart Kofer – Alcoholic police deputy/Abusive boyfriend
Earl Kofer – Stuart’s father
Janet Kofer – Stuart’s mother

SUMMARY/ EVALUATION:
How I picked it: I’d been ignoring the first works by Grisham thinking I’d seen the movies. We have listened to some of Grisham’s later novels—probably most, so I decided to try one of the older ones we’d never gotten around to, and liking it, decided it was time to start there at the beginning whether or not I’d seen a movie based on the book. I guess Mr. Grisham decided to get back to his earlier works as well, because he began building a series off of that first one. This recently published novel is the third of the series.
So, Grisham wrote A Time to Kill, the first of this series, first. It didn’t sell well, so he toyed with leaving the genre completely. He decided to go with a legal thriller next. That next book did so well, that movie rights were purchased. And the next, and the next, which got folks taking another look at “A Time to Kill” making it what my dad, and probably lots of other people, referred to as “a sleeper”—a great work that gets overlooked for a long time before it’s recognized for the treasure that it is, and they ended up making a movie of that too. Grisham had always been fond of his characters and the story line and strongly felt he could build on it. In a 2009 intro to another novel, he stated that eventually he’d like to get back to Jake and Clanton. So, he finally got to. The second in the series, Sycamore Row, was published in 2013, but it takes place just three years after A Time to Kill—1988 or 1989. This third, a Time for Mercy came another 7 years later in our time, and I don’t quite recall how long after Sycamore Row it’s supposed to be—I think maybe a year or so.
What it’s about: 16-year-old Drew Gamble and 14-year-old Keira Gamble have listened through the closed, locked and barricaded door of Keira’s bedroom, to of their mother’s boyfriend beating her until she suddenly goes quiet. After waiting in the subsequent silence, the siblings, check on their mother and find her unresponsive and pulseless on the kitchen floor. Stuart, meanwhile is found passed-out on top of the bed in the backroom. What follows draws the necessary involvement of Jake Brigance, Ford County Mississippi’s best criminal lawyer.
What I thought: I hope Mr. Grisham doesn’t stop here. I enjoy reading about this community he’s created. Once again, expertly narrated by Michael Beck.

AUTHOR:
John Grisham:
From Wikipedia:
“Grisham, the second of five children, was born in Jonesboro, Arkansas, to Wanda (née Skidmore) and John Ray Grisham.[6] His father was a construction worker and a cotton farmer, and his mother was a homemaker.[9] When Grisham was four years old, his family settled in Southaven, Mississippi, a suburb of Memphis, Tennessee.[6]
As a child, he wanted to be a baseball player.[8] As noted in the foreword to Calico Joe, Grisham gave up playing baseball at the age of 18, after a game in which a pitcher aimed a beanball at him, and narrowly missed doing the young Grisham grave harm.
Although Grisham's parents lacked formal education, his mother encouraged him to read and prepare for college.[1] He drew on his childhood experiences for his novel A Painted House.[6] Grisham started working for a plant nursery as a teenager, watering bushes for $1.00 an hour. He was soon promoted to a fence crew for $1.50 an hour. He wrote about the job: "there was no future in it". At 16, Grisham took a job with a plumbing contractor but says he "never drew inspiration from that miserable work".[10]
Through one of his father's contacts, he managed to find work on a highway asphalt crew in Mississippi at age 17. It was during this time that an unfortunate incident got him "serious" about college. A fight with gunfire broke out among the crew causing Grisham to run to a nearby restroom to find safety. He did not come out until after the police had detained the perpetrators. He hitchhiked home and started thinking about college. His next work was in retail, as a salesclerk in a department store men's underwear section, which he described as "humiliating". By this time, Grisham was halfway through college. Planning to become a tax lawyer, he was soon overcome by "the complexity and lunacy" of it. He decided to return to his hometown as a trial lawyer.[11]
He attended the Northwest Mississippi Community College in Senatobia, Mississippi and later attended Delta State University in Cleveland.[6] Grisham changed colleges three times before completing a degree.[1] He eventually graduated from Mississippi State University in 1977, receiving a B.S. degree in accounting. He later enrolled in the University of Mississippi School of Law to become a tax lawyer, but his interest shifted to general civil litigation. He graduated in 1981 with a J.D. degree.[6]
After leaving law school, he participated in some missionary work in Brazil, under the First Baptist Church of Oxford.[12]”

NARRATOR:
Michael Beck:
Wikipedia__ “John Michael Beck Taylor (born February 4, 1949), commonly known as Michael Beck, is an American actor. He is known for his roles as Swan in The Warriors (1979) and Sonny Malone in Xanadu (1980).
Beck was born in Memphis, Tennessee, the third of nine children. He attended Memphis University School and then Millsaps College in Jackson, Mississippi on a football scholarship.[1] While in college, he was a member of the Kappa Alpha fraternity. After graduating with a degree in economics, he was one of 30 (out of 2,500) applicants chosen for London's Central School of Speech and Drama.[2] Beck's stage credits, beginning with college, include Camelot (he was King Arthur), Of Mice and Men (he was George Milton), Romeo and Juliet (he was Tybalt),[1] and Cat on a Hot Tin Roof.”
Michael Beck has the perfect delivery for this series.

GENRE:
Fiction; Court room drama; Literature; Suspense

LOCATIONS:
(Fictitious) Ford County; Clanton, Mississippi

TIME FRAME:
1990

SUBJECTS:
Murder; Law ; Juvenile criminals; Domestic Abuse; Psychology

DEDICATION:
“To the memory of Sonny Mehta Knopf Chairman, Editor in Chief, Publisher”

SAMPLE QUOTATION:
From Chapter 4:
“Six days a week, every day but Sunday, Jake Brigance allowed himself to be dragged out of bed at the unholy hour of 5:30 a.m. by a noisy alarm clock. Six days a week he went straight to the coffeepot, punched a button, then hurried to his own private little bathroom in the basement, far away from his sleeping wife and daughter, where he showered in five minutes and spent another five with the rest of his ritual before dressing in the clothes he’d laid out the night before. He then hurried upstairs, poured a cup of black coffee, eased back into his bedroom, kissed his wife goodbye, grabbed his coffee, and, at precisely 5:45 closed the kitchen door and stepped onto the rear patio. Six days a week he drove the dark streets of Clanton to the picturesque square with the stately courthouse anchoring life as he knew it, parked in front of his office on Washington Street, and, at 6:00 a.m., six days a week, walked into the Coffee Shop to either hear or create the gossip, and to dine on wheat toast and grits.
But on the seventh day, he rested. There was never an alarm clock on the Sabbath, and Jake and Carla reveled in a long morning’s rest. He would eventually stumble forth around 7:30 and order her back to sleep. In the kitchen he poached eggs and toasted bread and served her breakfast in bed with coffee and juice. On a normal Sunday.
But nothing about this day would be normal. At 7:05 the phone rang, and since Carla insisted that the phone be located on his night table, he had no choice but to answer it.
“If I were you I’d leave town for a couple of days.” It was the low raspy voice of Harry Rex Vonner, perhaps his best friend and sometimes his only one.
“Well good morning, Harry Rex. This better be good.”
Harry Rex, a gifted and devious divorce lawyer, ran in the dark shadows of Ford County and took enormous pride in knowing the news, the dirt, and the gossip before almost anyone not wearing a badge.”

RATING:.
5

STARTED READING – FINISHED READING
9/30/22 – 10/16/22 ( )

Jake is brought in to defend Drew, a 16-year old accused of murdering his mother's boyfriend. Drew's mom, Josie, has suffered abuse at the hands of her boyfriend for years and this night was no different. Drew and his younger sister, Kiera, were hiding upstairs when Stuart came home and got in a fight with Josie. After a while, neither of them heard sounds coming from the kitchen. Stuart was a cop and Drew took his gun and shot him because he thought his mom was dead. ( )

murder

4.5 stars

When Josee’s boyfriend comes home drunk – again – she is beaten unconscious. Her two teenage kids are locked in one of their bedrooms hiding, but when they hear Stuart (the boyfriend) clomp off to his bedroom and they can’t hear their mother, they are afraid she is dead. When they go down to check, 16-year old Drew turns around to find Stuart passed out on his bed… with his gun beside him. 14-year old Kiera, downstairs with her mother, hears the shot. When the police come, Drew is arrested. In Mississippi, murdering a cop guarantees a capital (death penalty) trial. Defense lawyer Jake Brigance is handed the case.

Another great book by Grisham. I really like Jake and the story was fantastic. Not a short book (are any of Grisham’s short?), but I wanted to keep reading to see what surprises might happen next. Black woman Portia is working for Jake and planning to head to law school; she’s another secondary character I really like. I do hope the series continues. ( )