John Grisham???????????? You Have To Be Kidding!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

                                           Who could have guessed, darlings, that thirty plus years later, I would reading a John Grisham novel?  The last one I read was "The Pelican Brief."  When I read about "A Time For Mercy," I noted the similarity in  title to his first book, "A Time To Kill," which introduced the character of Jake Brigance,  and when I read the opening pages, and saw them dramatized on  film,  it took all I could emotionally muster to go on.

                                             But when I heard this novel dealt with a teenaged boy who murders his  mother's abusive boyfriend, I thought this might be interesting.  And it was.  Grisham has certainly grown as a writer, and his incorporation of legal concepts is so detailed I wish I had studied for the bar, even though I never went to law school.

                                               Jake Brigance is  back, and  so is his wife, Carla.  I just love Carla.  He is embroiled in defending a White Trash,  homeless woman  named Josie Gamble, living with her two children  in the home of Stuart Kotler.  Who just happens to be one of the top sheriff deputies in town.  When Stuart is found dead, and it is clear sixteen-year-old Drew Gamble did it, the reader is off on a legal journey,  recalling everything from "To Kill A Mockingbird," to the song "The Night The Lights Went Out In Georgia."  That is as far as I will  go;  the rest you have to find  out for yourselves.  Though I question Grisham's ambiguous ending.

                                                But don't get the idea I will pick up  Nora Roberts.

                                                 I mean, darlings,  in terms of literature, she is Oxycontin!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!